By:  | October 27, 2022 10:28 am

John Lineker has plenty of experience when it comes to missing weight. But it sounds like the Brazilian’s most recent failure at the scales really hit him hard.

It was the first time he had missed weight in his ONE Championship career. Lineker lost his title as a result and says it came as a very unpleasant surprise when he discovered he was 0.44lbs over the bantamweight limit,

“I was weighing in on the scale I had in the room, but the scale tricked me. I got the weight off just right because I don’t suffer to make it in ONE, their weigh-in method is excellent. I thought I was underweight and went calmly to weigh in on the official scale. But when I got on the official scale, I was 200 grams (0.44lbs) over.”

Having missed weight five times during his UFC career this wasn’t exactly a new experience for Lineker. But he admits that losing his title and a portion of his purse ‘shook him up’,

“Losing the title for a silly thing, for a miscalculation I made at the weigh-ins, made me very upset. I wasn’t suffering to lose weight, it wasn’t a lack of professionalism or a lack of training. This shook me up a lot.”

Premature ending

Lineker was on the wrong end of a beating from his compatriot. But the fight ended prematurely when Andrade landed a brutal low blow and was ruled a no contest.

Lineker knows he was second best at ONE on Prime Video 3 but says that missing weight affected his focus,

“I tried to stay strong and focused to get into the fight well, but I wasn’t 100%. But that’s no excuse. It was a tough fight. Fabricio is an excellent fighter but I was very upset about what happened.”

However he is not convinced that Andrade would have emerged victorious had it not been for the illegal knee,

“I didn’t go in 100% but I did what needed to be done in the fight. Unfortunately, the result was not what I expected.”

Final sequence

He breaks down the final sequence as follows,

“He hurt me with knees but I breathed deeply and managed to absorb the hard blow. I was hoping to get out of range and put him down, but he came in with another knee that caught my groin. It hurt a lot, I felt so much pain that I couldn’t get back into the fight.”

Lineker is a veteran of 45 fight so he knows a thing or two about overcoming adversity. But he says the pain caused by the low blow was like nothing he had ever experienced,

“The pain was unbearable, I thought it would never stop hurting. In addition to the pain, I couldn’t breathe properly. I was quite scared. My cup broke. It wasn’t just the impact, the blow went through the cup. It took all my strength and my momentum.”

Andrade has suggested that Lineker might be reluctant to rematch him but the UFC veteran makes it clear that is not the case,

“I believe there will be a second fight. The audience wants to see that fight again. It was a very exciting fight, a war, and the audience likes that style of fighting.”

My belt

However he does admit that it will be a while before he is ready for the rematch,

“I want to face him again soon, but first I need to recover. My face is a little crumpled now. But let’s see a date to have this new fight against him.”

Lineker is adamant that he is still the champion despite the belt officially being vacant. The Brazilian says he ‘can’t wait’ to fight for it again,

“I really want to get this belt back. I didn’t lose the title to an opponent, but to the scales. This belt is actually mine. I remain the champion. I can’t wait to fight for the belt again.”