Cub Swanson attended yesterday’s UFC Fight Night 211 media day ahead of his fight with Jonathan Martinez on Saturday night, but when it was his turn to talk to the assembled media he opted not to utter a single word and instead let one of his teammates do the talking for him.
According to the man tasked with being Swanson’s spokesman for the occasion, Dan Argueta, the reason for this somewhat bizarre situation was that Swanson’s voice needed a rest after doing a lot of interviews in the lead-up to the fight.
“Cub’s trying to relax his voice a little bit he’s had a lot of phone calls and interviews to do,” Argueta told reporters. “So I decided to fill in. He wanted to test me and he wanted to see if I answer everything correctly for him.”
The interview has left some people wondering whether it was all just a bit of fun, or whether it’s a big clue that perhaps Swanson’s first ever cut down to bantamweight isn’t going well.
Many fans had been surprised when Swanson announced that he was dropping down to 135lbs as he’d actually won three of his last four fights at featherweight, including a KO of Daniel Pineda and most recently a first round TKO of Darren Elkin, and just a few weeks shy of his 39th birthday there have been doubts about whether it was a good idea.
It’ll certainly make Friday’s weigh-ins interesting, and we’ll find out for sure whether it works out for him on Saturday night, while in the mean time you can watch the interview below.