Henry Cejudo, Eric Albarracin explain real split behind viral breakup prank: 'A Shakespeare romantic thing'

Henry Cejudo and coach Eric Albarracin pulled off a prank that had everyone talking, but it wasn’t all fun and games.

On Wednesday, the longtime friends provided further details about the controversial scene from a recent “UFC Countdown” episode in which Cejudo appeared to fire Albarracin ahead of his upcoming fight with Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 298. Not long after that episode was released, Cejudo and Albarracin appeared together during UFC Fight Week in Anaheim, Calif., calling the whole incident a prank.

The truth is, there was plenty of reality behind the supposedly staged split.

“That was real,” Albarracin said Wednesday on The MMA Hour. “That’s the thing, nobody understands when that was shot, so that was shot in early December. If you followed me on my Instagram, you would see that I’m in Brazil for the last two months with Paolo [Costa] and Patricio [Pitbull], and building the Broadstreet House down there, bringing international fighters in and building the next generation of fighters. So that was real. It was real.

“I hadn’t seen Henry since after the fight with Aljamain [Sterling]. He came to Brazil to the Pitbull brothers in Natal, he even trained a little bit, and then I hadn’t seen him until that day of the Countdown.”

Albarracin is in Anaheim to corner middleweight contender Costa, who fights Robert Whittaker on Saturday, so it wasn’t surprising to see him reunite with Cejudo. Their temporary split allowed Albarracin to focus on Costa and Patricio Pitbull’s upcoming fights, while Cejudo was free to shake up his training camp.

The former two-division champion admits it was smart to take a break from the routine he and Albarracin had established over the course of their decades-long partnership.

“I think with Eric, obviously he has Patricio Pitbull and he had Paolo ‘Borrachinha,’ Paolo fights this weekend with me and Pitbull fights the following weekend,” Cejudo said at the UFC 298 media day on Wednesday. “I just felt like it would be unselfish of me, especially when he has two guys, and I was happy to wait for such a long time. At the same time, I did need a little break from Captain (laughs).

“It worked out perfect. We did chit-chat over the phone periodically, I let him know everything that’s going on.”

The Countdown clip drew a wide variety of reactions from the MMA community, with some questioning its veracity and others criticizing Cejudo for putting personal business on camera.

Albarracin broke down the thinking behind the stunt and the part he played in bringing it to life.

“Nine weeks ago is when it was filmed and, you know, I helped create the ‘King of Cringe,’” Albarracin said. “So I know Henry better than anybody else, so everybody thinks it had to be staged to be on camera like that. When I’ve been on a couple of TUF: Brazils, The Ultimate Fighter, when cameras are around, I know what goes on is like a show, so I can feel, ‘Hold on, UFC Countdown is here. Henry’s about to say something to me, because he says, ‘Captain, can I have a talk with you?’ We all know what that means. Like, wait a minute, something’s about to go down.

“So I need to get in mode to respond to what he’s going to say. And the thing was, I’ve been with Henry for 20 years, which means we’re very close, and I think he might have said it on the Countdown show, yeah, we butt heads, we have training philosophy differences and we’re very close like Paolo and his brother. One thing I saw in Abu Dhabi with Paolo and his brother, for three weeks Paolo’s brother wasn’t there, and when he arrived, they were butting heads. I was like, ‘Huh, that’s exactly what me and Henry do.’ Now I feel better, but so does Paolo and his brother sometimes. So I know what the relationship is like, and when Henry said that, ‘Hey Captain, we butt heads a lot, I want peace of mind.’ I was like, ‘OK, I know you do, we butt heads. So if this is what you want, I’m going to be front row cheering you on.’”

According to both Cejudo and Albarracin, the wrestling coach will be in Cejudo’s corner on Saturday in addition to his duties with Costa. Both Cejudo and Costa’s fights have plenty of stakes, with the fighters potentially lining themselves up for future title shots with a win on Saturday.

As for why a split was needed, Albarracin pointed to the night before Cejudo was to weigh in for his fight with then-bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling for UFC 288 this past May. Albarracin wanted Cejudo to finish cutting weight the night before official weigh-ins so as not to risk losing the fight on the scale, but Cejudo wanted to split the cut between the night and the next morning. Cejudo eventually agreed to do it Albarracin’s way, but he later questioned whether doing the extreme cut all at once affected his fight-night performance.

Albarracin was grateful to reunite with Cejudo despite any past tension and has no regrets about having onlookers take the journey with them.

“It’s like a Shakespeare romantic thing where there’s romance, breakup, and then recovery,” Albarracin said. “Welcome to the world of MMA. It’s drama and guess what? There was no UFC 300 announcement and for two days everybody was contacting me, everybody was talking about it.”

“I was going to do whatever he wants,” Albarracin continued. “Henry has the art of war, the art of violence, the art of combat, he has his own system. He used it to coach [Deiveson] Figueiredo, me and him coached Figueiredo to a world title, and he wants to implement his own system into his game. He did last fight, and he wanted to do it for this fight, so as a coach, I understand the competitiveness of an Olympic champion that’s willing to do whatever it takes.”