Dan Hardy

Who was that?

His name was Daizo Ishige.

Yeah, he was the king of pancreas.

He was the favorite to win the Cage Force tournament, and I pulled him in the first round.

And I went out there just with the intention of doing a normal weight cut, you know, six or seven pounds, exactly what I would normally do.

I had a little bit more to cut because of the flight.

But...

I honestly, hand on heart, believe that if I'd either not cut the weight or I'd cut the weight in a better way and rehydrated, I would have been able to stop him and he wouldn't have had the brain damage that he ended up with.

Because I look back to that third round and I just didn't have the power.

It was like a bad dream where I'm just punching him and he's just...

Bouncing around, he's a bloody mess.

And I don't know whether he cut weight as well, but certainly the thing that played into the damage that was done to him was my weight cut.

That's crazy.

Isn't that crazy to think of?

I just didn't want to... But again, like...

I have no guilt associated with that because we knew what we were doing when we got in there and I would not hold it against him if that had happened to me.

You know what I mean?

But in hindsight, pulling the whole thing apart, I could have been a better version of myself as a martial artist and it would have actually probably saved him some of the damage that he ended up taking in the third.

The name seems silly.

That's a good point, actually.