Told he wasn’t supposed to have his contacts in, Juan Adams had to squint a little in his fight against Chris De La Rocha at UFC Milwaukee — aiming for the head and belly, since the rest was a blur.
Milwaukee, WI — Heavyweight prospect Juan Adams had never truly been tested through the first four fights of his professional career. While that’s not to say he’d been winning easy fights, he’d simply been winning them so fast that a real test had never come. Until UFC Milwaukee (UFC on FOX 31, the promotion’s final curtain call on the FOX network), Adams had never left the first round. Never been through a war that truly tested his chin.
All that changed against Chris De La Rocha in the opening bout at UFC Milwaukee. Adams made it into the third before stopping the gritty De La Rocha. And it was a bloody affair.
“I was kind of freaking out between the rounds, I’m like ‘did he cut me? I don’t think I got hit that much,'” Adams said after he bloodied his opponent in ‘The Kraken’s’ promotional debut. “I found out afterwards it’s not my blood, I almost threw up.”
“I definitely need a shower now,” he added. Adams came into the contest with a big head of steam, finishing four straight opponents in the first round. To hear him call a bit of blood “gross, another human’s bodily fluids all over me” comes as something of a surprise, given his line of work. Then again, it was his first real war, and will no doubt be something he gets used to.
As will being under the UFC lights period. “I’ll get used to it,” he said of his debut. “This is my first time in the octagon, there were a little bit of jitters. Everyone responds to it differently. It took me a while to finally wake up. I was a little tentative out there.”
Part of the problem was his vision. “I said my contact fell out in the first round, I didn’t have my contacts in at all. So that threw me off a little bit, not being able to see,” Adams admitted. “I just found out before this fight that you’re not allowed to fight with contacts in. So I didn’t wear them for this one, it threw me off a little bit.”
Lasik, as was suggested to him by one reporter backstage, might be in the cards. “I can finally afford it after this fight, so that’s what’s going to happen.” As for what he did see Saturday, Adams said that his opponent was “all blurry, all I see is he’s got a real big head and a real big gut, so that’s what I focused on.” In the end, focusing on that was enough.
Catch the full post-fight press scrum with Juan Adams above, and check out our official Youtube page for more behind the scenes videos!
