Cutting weight is already combat sports’ dirty little open secret. A backbone of the industry that has caused countless fights to fall apart due to health complications and even ruined entire careers. But with money, glory, and titles on the line, fighters will often go to just about any lengths necessary to make sure that they’re under the limit when they step on the scales.
With that kind of drive, it’s no surprise that UFC athletes would have a few stories floating around that they’d rather not make public. Back in 2014, former UFC fighter Cody McKenzie even went so far as to donate blood in order to make weight for his bout against Brock Larsen at Battlegrounds MMA 5. Current middleweight champion Israel Adesanya may not have gone quite that far, but in a recent interview with Bleacher Report’s Taylor Rooks, the City Kickboxing standout admitted that he’s ejected a few more bodily fluids than just sweat and spit when the situation called for it.
“Pause, pause, pause. Let me think if I can say—” Adesanya trailed off, when asked what the “craziest thing” he’d ever done to make weight was.
“Ah f-ck, hold up. F-cking hell,” he continued, trying to buy time.
“Well, back in kickboxing, back in the day, when I was an amateur, when I was really young and had no—I didn’t have the fight dietician, who’s the guy that looks after us with my meals and whatnot. I did not have him on deck, I wasn’t in the UFC.
“Ah f-ck, man,” Adesanya exclaimed, trailing off again.
“I—f-ck, how do I put this? I busted a nut to make weight,” he finally admitted.
“You really wanted to know?” Adesanya responded when asked how much that could even weigh. “At the time, I was young and on that whole no [sex] before a fight—before I knew it was a myth. And yeah, I just—yeah. And then a few grams came off. 100 grams.”
“Yeah, I made weight.”
Considering Adesanya’s post fight celebratory humping of Paulo Costa, this may not be the most surprising answer coming from the UFC champ, but it seems clear that it’s a technique he’d rather not rely on in the future.
“But, I wouldn’t advise it,” Adesanya admitted. “I was younger back then—I was, like, 21 or 22—I didn’t know what I was doing with weight cutting, and yeah, that was something.”
Adesanya faces off against former kickboxing foe Alex Pereira in the main event of this weekend’s UFC 281 PPV event at Madison Square Garden in New York. Alongside the middleweight title fight the card will feature a strawweight championship bout between reigning belt holder Carla Esparza and former champ Zhang Weili.
