Karl Roberson details fateful weight cut, has strong words for Marvin Vettori

LAS VEGAS – Karl Roberson may have had to withdraw from his most recent scheduled fight, but it seems he was lucky things weren’t way worse.

Roberson (9-2 MMA, 4-2 UFC) was scheduled to face Marvin Vettori (14-3-1 MMA, 4-2-1 UFC) in May at UFC on ESPN+ 29 in Florida, but he was ruled medically ineligible to fight on the day of the card due to medical issues associated with his weight cut. It all sounds rather routine until you hear him describe exactly what happened.

“During the weight cut, I starting have seizures – like, small seizures – so they had to stop my weight cut,” Roberson told MMA Junkie. “I still went down there, weighed in and tried to make it to the fight. When I tried to rehydrate, my body never came back. My legs gave out, and I passed out. I hit my head, and they said I was going through rhabdomyolysis.

“My brain functions started to not work, so they took me to the hospital, rehydrated me and checked me to make sure I wasn’t completely gone down the drain, so they pulled me from the card.”

Fortunately, Roberson is fine now and ready to compete just one month later. However, he insists it hasn’t exactly been an easy stretch.

“It’s been a long road,” Roberson said. “It’s been a hard journey, but basically getting the right people in my corner, making sure my levels stay right and make sure I was able to even do it, truthfully. I talked to a few doctors, and they told me, like, ‘It’s going to be hard, but you can definitely get down because your body didn’t completely shut down, but you were pretty close, so if you do everything right and you diet right and stay on the path, you’ll be OK. You’ll make it.’

“It was a complete diet change. I was more on a fat-heavy diet, not that much carbs, so my muscles weren’t rebuilding really correctly and I wasn’t treating my body the correct way, so I had to put a lot more carbs and really go a different direction with my diet.”

Roberson’s withdrawal from the card in Jacksonville was only part of the story. The real headlines came when he and Vettori crossed paths in the host hotel when Roberson was waiting to get to the airport.

“Baby K” said when he left his room, he ended up riding down in an elevator with a member of Vettori’s team. Once they reached the ground floor, things took a turn for the worse.

“Truthfully, it was a little suspect situation,” Roberson said. “I got called from my room to go get on a plane to go home so I could go and get to my doctor to see what I can get. … As we’re coming down, Marvin was standing there in the lobby with a coffee, pacing back and forth. OK. It is what it is. As I’m walking, he’s approaching me and said, ‘What happened?’ I’m like, ‘I passed out. My bad. Like, they pulled me from the card.’ He said, ‘That’s messed up.’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s messed up.’

“Then I asked him, like, ‘Bro, you called a journalist and said I was scared to fight you?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ Then he approached me like he was trying to fight me. I’m a fighter. You don’t approach a fighter in an aggressive way, especially when we’re supposed to fight. So I was like, ‘My bad, man. So why would you say that?’ … So he walks to the other side of the lobby, puts his coffee down, and that’s when his nutritionist or his boy or whatever the f-ck he is comes out the elevator. He starts yelling, ‘Oh you want to fight me?’ and this and that. I was like, ‘What are you yelling for? This is completely unnecessary.’

“That’s basically what it was. He got all mad. He got pushed away by hotel concierge, which is weird, and we just left.”

The two will get to settle their differences Saturday when they meet in the co-main event of UFC on ESPN 10, which takes place at the UFC Apex. The card airs on ESPN and streams on ESPN+.

Given the previous exchanges between the two, it seems likely that fireworks will ensue. Roberson said he was thrilled the UFC could get them booked together again.

“I love this fight, and I wanted to fight him,” Roberson said. “He wants to talk all this sh-t and be all emotional. Basically, his emotions – he can’t control his emotions. He sounds like he’s still on steroids, truthfully. He sounds like he’s still juicing because his emotions were all over the place, and he’s acting like a little b-tch. So I wanted to fight him. I’m like, ‘Set it up. If I get cleared to fight, if I’m good to make weight, let’s do it.’ And the UFC did it, so let’s get it.”

Given the pair’s fighting styles, the contest could prove quite entertaining, and with a little backstory to boot, it’s a contest rife with intrigue.

“It’s definitely a big fight,” Roberson said. “With everything going on, we’ve got a lot of attention, and we both like to fight. So we’ll go in there, stand, bang, see who really wants to fight, and we’ll do it for the fans.”