Curtis Blaydes is opening up on a rough-sounding case of Norovirus that knocked him off UFC 313 back in March.
Blaydes was set to fight new UFC arrival Rizvan Kuniev in a fight that had been pushed back a few weeks from its original date in February. After a few more shuffles, “Razor” will now fight Kuniev in Baku, Azerbaijan on June 21st. Hopefully, he won’t have to fight a virus as well.
“Yeah, it’s rough,” Blaydes told Home of Fight of his illness. “I can’t speak for everyone, but in my own experience, it’s about twelve hours of pissing out of your butt. It’s rough. And it’s very dehydrating. It’s not just the diarrhea. It’s also nausea. You’re throwing up. You can’t hold down even a drop of water. It wasn’t a good a good experience.”
“That’s why I had to call off the fight. I’m not gonna risk my ranking and my legacy and everything I’ve built up because I got a virus the morning of the park. So it was easy decision.”
Norovirus or Norovirus-like symptoms have been striking down random fighters a lot lately. Joe Pyfer also made the call to withdraw from his UFC Mexico City fight against Kelvin Gastelum over it. Loopy Godinez went ahead with her fight and nearly crapped her pants after round two. Asked if he considered staying and risking a Loopy, Blaydes said no.
“I knew immediately within the first hour, it was bad. I knew then,” Blaydes said. “I know my post was like, ‘We’ll just see how it is in a few hours.’ It hit me up immediately. It hit me at 2 in the morning. It woke me up out of my sleep, and I texted them while I was on the toilet like, ‘Yo, I am messed up. This is not good.’”
To this day, Curtis Blaydes win over Alastair Overeem is still one of the scariest knockouts ever. His elbows looked like gunshots landing. pic.twitter.com/VFHlz80Dnl
— OverDogs Podcast (@OverDogsPodcast) March 10, 2024
“Yeah, we made the decision around 1 in the afternoon. I was just like, ‘There’s no way I’m gonna be able to healthily be able to bounce back and be me.’ It’s not to say I couldn’t have won, but this is heavyweight. It doesn’t take the most skill to get a lucky haymaker or a lucky overhand. It just wasn’t worth it.”
As for fighting a relative unknown and unranked fighter like Rizvan Kuniev in Azerbaijan?
“Money’s the same,” Curtis said simply. “You can give me an 0-18 guy or you can give me Jon Jones, the money’s the same. I don’t care. I don’t care about the venue. I’m not into all that. All the bragging and flashiness? I’m here to get money and get out.”
“When I’m retired, I hope the world forgets about me. I want my money, and I want to get outta here.”
