diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
index ba8b612b10c..3355367c0d5 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
@@ -62,6 +62,10 @@ Release 2.6.0 - UNRELEASED
     HDFS-6701. Make seed optional in NetworkTopology#sortByDistance.
     (Ashwin Shankar via wang)
 
+    HDFS-6755. There is an unnecessary sleep in the code path where
+    DFSOutputStream#close gives up its attempt to contact the namenode
+    (mitdesai21 via cmccabe)
+
   OPTIMIZATIONS
 
     HDFS-6690. Deduplicate xattr names in memory. (wang)
diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/DFSOutputStream.java b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/DFSOutputStream.java
index fda49546383..b27c24e4ea7 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/DFSOutputStream.java
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hdfs/DFSOutputStream.java
@@ -2142,12 +2142,12 @@ public class DFSOutputStream extends FSOutputSummer
             throw new IOException(msg);
         }
         try {
-          Thread.sleep(localTimeout);
           if (retries == 0) {
             throw new IOException("Unable to close file because the last block"
                 + " does not have enough number of replicas.");
           }
           retries--;
+          Thread.sleep(localTimeout);
           localTimeout *= 2;
           if (Time.now() - localstart > 5000) {
             DFSClient.LOG.info("Could not complete " + src + " retrying...");