Las Vegas — Flyweight Kevin Borjas believes he showed the world his real self at UFC Vegas 119 this past weekend.
The fight, however, did not go off without a hitch. Borjas (11-5) missed weight for his fight with Andre Lima by a full three pounds, a situation he had to address following his unanimous decision win at the Meta Apex.
“I believed in myself, I’d just come off a fight in Mexico, just had to recover, didn’t have much time to actually get back into training. Then the UFC came calling, and I feel that, that’s what I said, I’m always there,” Borjas told media outlets including Cageside Press backstage. “The company wanted me to fight, and if they want to see me fight, I felt I didn’t have the right to say no. To say no to this organization. If they want to see me fight, I will fight.”
The weight flub is something he tied to that fight in Mexico in February, with the Peruvian fighter explaining that “this was the first time that actually happened in my life. As I said, took the fight on short notice, just came back from Mexico, I was actually resting so I was actually walking around 170.”
“Then I came into this weekend, I was 145. It was still, it was very hard to cut, but again, I’ve taken fights when people didn’t make weight and it does happen. It’s happened the other way and I’ve done it.”
A conciliatory Borjas added that “it’s something I’d like to apologize to everyone for; it’s the first time that it’s ever happened in my career. There was one point where I wasn’t sweating at all, nothing, we weren’t losing anything, so at one point we had to give up on it. I would love for everybody to know that this is not me, never happened in my life, I’d like to apologize, and that’s pretty much what happened. It was a once in a lifetime thing, it was very hard to me but I was able to come through.”
Coming off a pair of losses, together with his team, Borjas explained, “we called this operation Lazarus, because we really did rise from the dead.” He also didn’t sweat coming into the fight as the underdog.
“Since I came to the UFC, I’ve never been a favorite anyway. In this case I was just way more of an underdog and he was more of a favorite. It doesn’t surprise me, and I can tell you one thing, we got it done and a lot of people lost a lot of money.”
Watch the full UFC Vegas 119 post-fight press conference with Kevin Borjas above.
