Tim Boetsch on Johny Hendricks' 'unprofessional' weight miss: 'Maybe he was taking me lightly'

OKLAHOMA CITY – For UFC middleweight Tim Boetsch, what many considered an upset win was a mere realization of the exact scenario that he had visualized.

Boetsch (21-11 MMA, 12-10 UFC) dispatched former 170-pound champion Johnny Hendricks (18-7 MMA, 13-7 UFC) in the second round of Sunday’s UFC Fight Night 112 co-headliner. While Boetsch’s hands sealed the deal, a massive head-kick spelled the beginning of the end.

Boetsch is excited to add a a former titleholder to his list of victims. But that’s not his main reason to celebrate Sunday’s triumph.

“To be honest, I’m more excited that I went in there and executed the game plan exactly how we had envisioned it,” Boetsch said after the FS1-televised event at Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City, Okla. “And I actually thought that we’d get the opportunity to throw that head kick in Round 2. I didn’t know exactly when, but I saw the opportunity early. There it was.”

Boetsch said he saw basically what he was expecting from Hendricks: a fighter who’s “heavy on the lead leg” with, of course, some serious power in his left hand. The plan to counter that, Boetsch explained, was to chop the front leg and set up the fight-finishing kick with the teep to the body.

“It works perfectly against southpaws,” Boetsch said. “As you see, there’s the result: head-kick knockout.”

Of course, not everything went exactly as planned. What was supposed to be a 185-pound bout became a catchweight when Hendricks, who’d repeatedly failed to make the 170-pound limit of the division he once ruled, missed the middleweight limit as well.

Boetsch, who had performed at heavier divisions, had no major issue with accommodating Hendricks’ miss – and he got 20 percent of his purse in return. But the respect he holds for Hendricks’ ex-champ credentials doesn’t mean he gets a full pass for his “very unprofessional” move.

“We joked about that in camp; somebody said, ‘What are the chances of him missing weight at this one?'” Boetsch said. “I said, ‘I don’t really care if he does.’ I jokingly said that he might, and then Marcus (Davis) came to me the morning of the weigh-ins and said he was going to miss, and not even attempt it.

“We still had a couple of hours, or an hour and a half left at that point. So I’m like, ‘All right, I guess we’ll see how this goes.’ If he’s not willing to cut a couple extra pounds, (it) kind of speaks to his professionalism.”

Boetsch said that his camp had been following a bit of Hendricks’ camp online, and had found that the ex-champ was weighing in at 189 pounds after practice. Which makes him think about the reasons for the miss.

“I don’t see any reason why he didn’t make the weight, other than just he lack of discipline,” Boetsch said. “Maybe he was taking me lightly. I don’t know. But anybody who does that should probably rethink it.”

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 112, check out the UFC Events section of the site.