Alexandre Pantoja revealed he was “not 100%” when he faced Brandon Royval at UFC 296. According to the flyweight champ, he was still feeling “super dizzy” from the flu he had weeks ago but chose to hide it to not give the opponent the advantage in the bout.

Pantoja defended his belt from Royval last Saturday and won via a unanimous decision (50-45, 50-45-49-46). Nonetheless, this is not the sole highlight of the bout: the champ did it while managing a problematic spatial orientation in the fight. As “The Cannibal” revealed, he caught flu weeks prior to the fight, which continued to affect him last weekend and prevented him from making a finish.

“I don’t like to say this, because maybe it sounds like an excuse,” the champ revealed to The MMA Hour. “But, I had, like, the flu two weeks ago, and I lost one week of the training. I think maybe this affected me a little bit.”

Pantoja knew that giving in to the feeling could cause a bigger problem. With this, despite feeling the worst of it at the last round, Pantoja advised his team not to make a giveaway of his situation.

“At some point in the fight, I felt super dizzy,” the Brazilian fighter shared. “And in the last round, when I got to the fifth round, one of my coaches started to jump off me. He take me by the arms and started to jump off me. I said, ‘Hey, leave me. If you do that, my opponent can see that and can realize I’m not one hundred percent.’… But I gave my best that night.”

Fortunately, Pantoja managed to survive the bout, albeit without a finish. Now, the fighter is looking forward to having another title defense, either against Brandon Moreno or Amir Albazi.

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