Fighting with Fever, Kingsbury Thankful He Finished Romero Quickly

The night before he fought Ricardo Romero at UFC 126, Kyle Kingsbury soaked his bed with sweat. He had a fever. His throat was tickling too.

“I can’t even imagine how many pounds I lost in my sleep,” Kingsbury (Pictured) said recently on the Sherdog Radio Network’s “Beatdown” show.

Turns out he had spent too much time in the steam room working his weight down, resulting in some fluid in his lungs that brought on the other symptoms. Kingsbury fought anyway. He won too, stopping Romero just 21 seconds into the first round.

“It was pretty bad, but I just put it in the back of my head and really didn’t give it too much attention,” Kingsbury said. “I didn’t even tell my coaches until after the fight. Thankfully it didn’t end up going three rounds because I would have been hurting in the third round there for sure.”

After the fight Kingsbury needed an IV and drank an additional gallon of fluids. Despite his dehydrated state, he looked to be in tremendous shape.

“I try to come in as lean as I can,” Kingsbury said. “That way I know that whatever I’m walking around at, it’s all muscle and bones. You look at other guys that maybe don’t do that, and it’s kind of mindboggling to me why if you’re in any weight class other than heavyweight, how you would carry extra fat knowing that you’re really at a disadvantage.”

Kingsbury has his regimen down to a science. It includes a strict diet that begins 10 weeks before the fight as well as blood tests every three to four weeks that let him keep a close eye on his body’s state.

With that said, it may sound strange that Kingsbury ended up so ill the night before his bout.

“By fight day, if all goes well, you feel like you’re invincible. You’re indestructible. Nothing’s going to get to you,” Kingsbury said. “That’s on one hand. On the other hand, you really can’t make any changes to whatever normal routine you’ve become accustomed to. Because you’ve eliminated all of these bad things from your body, you’re almost like a baby. You can’t take any new things into you. For instance, the steam room, which I wasn’t accustomed to, I wound up having an adverse reaction. … I didn’t really think about how fragile everything is at that point in my body. Going into that steam room didn’t seem like it hurt me and then I spent a little too much time in there.”

Of course, Kingsbury came out on top anyway and has now won three straight in the UFC. He credits his teammates at American Kickboxing Academy and Power MMA for his improvement.

“That’s really what it is,” Kingsbury said. “I’ve been working with a lot of great guys at AKA. I’ve also been working with a lot of great guys at Power MMA, with Ryan Bader, C.B. Dollaway, Aaron Simpson, those guys. I’ve got the best of both worlds, training in Arizona as well as California. The sky’s the limit when you surround yourself with guys that are better than you.”

Listen to the full interview (beginning at 1:14:25) with Kingsbury, who also discussed teammate Ryan Bader’s loss to Jon Jones.