Tyson Pedro revealed that he was dealing with a case of “extreme diarrhea” ahead of his UFC 284 bout on Saturday night.
Pedro walked into the affair as a strong -225 favorite against opponent Modestas Bukauskas who had stepped up on short notice. Unfortunately, Pedro’s performance felt flat and uninspired drawing criticism from an MMA community that largely saw him as a sturdy parlay piece. Pedro lost the bout via unanimous decision. Following the defeat, Pedro took to Instagram to reveal that 24 hours before he was scheduled to make the walk, he came down with a nasty case of gastroenteritis that had him sitting on and squatting in front of a toilet up until the moment the UFC bus arrived.
“Hey, what’s going on? Just thought I’d do this video now that the dust has settled,” Pedro said. “Well, I wasn’t actually going to do this video because I didn’t think I owed anyone an explanation except to the people that I love. But those people that I love have been getting upset over some of the messages because maybe people don’t know what happened and I’m not gonna lie, some of the messages have been getting to me, but that’s just the way of social media.
“First of all and foremost, I want to thank Modestas (Bukauskas). Game opponent. He took the fight on short notice and came out on top. I’m not taking anything away from him and I think that’s what some people may have thought I was doing by saying that I had health concerns, but that’s not the case at all.
“He came, he beat me, and that’s the fight game, but the night before my fight, I contracted [Gastroenteritis]. It was extreme diarrhea and vomiting for the whole night. When the UFC bus came, I was still on the toilet ground vomiting. If you want to confirm it, you can ask the USADA guy sitting there watching me sh*t non-stop while he’s trying to take my p*ss.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/Con3AiBtAry/
Tyson Pedro Didn’t Want to Disappoint His Family by Pulling Out of the Bout
With such a severe illness, one would question why Tyson Pedro would ever go ahead with the bout. Pedro addressed that in his video on Instagram, stating that he simply did not want to disappoint his employer, opponent, family, or his fans, all of whom played a role in making the fight happen to some extent.
“I still decided to fight for a couple of reasons. One, the UFC had sorted out this fight on late notice so I didn’t want to let them down. Two, Modestas had taken the fight on a week’s notice so I didn’t want to let him down. Three, because I didn’t want to let my daughter down. When you say you’re going to do something, get in there and do it. And four, I didn’t want to let the fans down because I know a lot of them wanted to come see me and watch me fight.“
As far as the negative comments from quote-unquote fans, Pedro frankly doesn’t care if you lost money gambling on him, noting the litany of things he potentially lost by competing compromised.
“There’s a lot of people that have commenting some terrible stuff and I just don’t think that they would have done the same and taken that risk of fighting in front of hundreds of thousands if they were in the same position. I also don’t care about your [parlays]. I lost my win bonus.
“I lost potential contract renegotiation and I took the risk of getting beaten up knowing I wasn’t 100%, but that was all my choice because I thought I could pull it off. I’m still gonna go back and fight with or without your support, but thank you very much to all those people that did send me kind messages. The ones who back me win or lose. You’re the reason why I fight.”
Quotes via LowkickMMA
