When Ray Borg was forced to withdraw from his title fight against Demetrious Johnson, timing and luck were not on his side

The “Tazmexican Devil” missed a great opportunity and equally took away Johnson’s chance to break the all-time UFC title defense record. Borg, however, simply had no choice but to pull out:

“The plane ride over there, I was just kinda feeling like sh*t,” Borg recalled on The MMA Hour. “My body was aching really, really bad, and it was just really, really hard. And it was just kinda like, alright, it is what it is, I’m probably just getting over a tiny cold or just the atmosphere change. And then open media day wasn’t too, too bad; I was feeling a little uncomfortable.

“It wasn’t until open workouts (that I started to realize it was bad). Open workouts, I felt like I was having to push through a hard, hard workout. Like, I felt like it was one of my hardest training days of fight camp and I was having to push through it. So it was kinda at open workouts where I was really like, ‘This isn’t quite right. I’m feeling absolutely horrible.’”

Following his taking ill at the UFC 215 open workouts, Borg’s concerns were compounded when lethargy completely took hold of him:

“That was a key thing on why I knew I was sick,” Borg said. “Because I know my body very well, and on fight week, I’m active. I like to walk around, I like to hang out. And just the whole fight week, I just slept, and it was unusual for me because I’ve never been like that. I’ve never just been so dead tired on fight week. After [open workouts], I went to my hotel room, I slept, woke up, started throwing up a little bit, feeling like sh*t, and it was then when I was just — it was one of those things that had to be called.

“Everyone at Jackson’s, even Greg Jackson himself, came up to me and told me he doesn’t even know how I made it to fight week,” Borg added. “Because Greg Jackson was sick as well, and my wife caught it before I did, and just everyone at the gym was just catching it; the flu was going around, a lot of people were staying home sick. I think what really intensified it is a lot of people were also trying to push through it, and a lot of people were training sick (at the gym). So it was just, the flu was going around here in Albuquerque with the weather change and everything. It just so happened to be bad timing.”