Eric Spicely conducts his first interview since his release from the UFC.
Unfortunately, the middleweight fighter was let go from the promotion after he was forced to withdraw from a match-up against Markus Perez due to being over 20 pounds heavy during fight week. Spicely’s weight issues stems from recently taking anti-depressants due to the head trauma he sustained during his fight against Deron Winn.
Despite not being given much of a fair shake in his second stint with the company, Spicely has no regrets over the situation as he understands that he didn’t fulfill his contractual obligations,“I have no regrets,” he told MMA Fighting. “I didn’t sh*t talk the UFC. I understand what’s going on. I didn’t fulfill my contractual duties, and I can only go forward from here and be positive.”
The 33-year-old further dives into his reasoning for taking anti-depressants and how the medication greatly affected his weight cutting process:
“I’ve been fighting for a long time, and it was just after the Deron fight, I had a concussion for so long, and I was just so depressed after, I started taking medication,” he said. “Naturally, with a lot of them, one of the side effects is you start gaining a lot of weight. It’s very hard to lose weight. So I’ve been trying to figure it out, and the weight cut just went f*cking south for the first time in my career.”
Once he realized the weight gain, Spicely stopped taking his medication and his manager, Daniel Rubenstein, was able to negotiate a 195-pound catchweight fight. However, the middleweight started experiencing blackouts during his weight cutting process and eventually his manager and UFC’s doctor, Jeff Davidson, advised him to not cut anymore weight.
Despite exiting the promotion for the second time in his professional career, Spicely knows the consequences when it comes to dealing with the sport. At the end of the day, MMA is more than just a job to him as he loves what he does and will continue fighting on:
“Once I started the medication, everyone saw a complete change in me and my attitude and my emotions,” he said. “I feel so much better. I’m telling you, I think this might have been ‘Fight of the Night’ with Markus Perez. If anything, everyone’s been very supportive of it. It hasn’t been a bad thing.
“I’ve struggled with depression my entire life, so getting punched in the head is only going to make that worse. It’s not like it’s just from this or it came out of nowhere. I think you’d find 95 percent of fighters – maybe that’s a high number – or 75 percent of fighters are struggling with the same thing. And I know they are - they’ve reached out to me. They’ve thanked me for speaking about it because they didn’t have the courage to speak about it. This is what we signed up for. This is what I love. I’m not ready to give up yet. I know what the consequences are, just like everyone who plays football and everyone who does a contact sport. We all know the consequences, but the heart wants what the heart wants.