Weight cutting is a nasty part of the sport of MMA and former UFC light heavyweight champion Glover Teixeira felt the effects of it before his UFC 275 title defense.
Teixeira is coming off a last-minute submission loss at UFC 275, in which he lost his title. During his in-cage post-fight interview, he mentioned something about his weight cut but then stopped himself, saying it wasn’t an excuse.
“You know, it’s no excuse but I had a very rough weight cut…to be honest, I’m not even going to [talk about] the weight cut. He was hitting me with some body shots that took my gas away,” Teixeira told Daniel Cormier after the UFC 275 main event.
I’ve never felt bad like that
However, in a recent interview with Ag.Fight, which was translated through subtitles, Teixeira went into more detail about his weight cut, which included him making weight six hours before official weigh-ins.
“I waited six hours because I hit the weight before,” Teixeira said. “So I hit the weight earlier because it’s that thing. Some will say, ‘why did you hit it so early?’ But fu*k it, will you go all day without eating? You’re home with that anxiety, damn it, dying to eat. So you think, ‘let’s hit this weight soon.’ You never know, maybe it will take a little longer.’ The problem was that I weighed 6:30, trained at 9:30, and I think that, I don’t know, man. I went a long time without recovering. I’ve never felt bad like that, you know?”
So, I started to rehydrate by drinking water. It wasn’t actually water, it’s a drink that the UFC P.I. gives us for recovery. Right after drinking, like ten minutes later, I did an interview on ESPN with [Michael] Bisping and Cormier. And right after that, when I went to talk with Evelyn [Rodrigues], I got up and felt like throwing up…So I saw down and even Evelyn told me, ‘Oh, Glover go get some rest, you’re not well.’ After that, I threw up on the bus. I hadn’t eaten anything, just drank.”
My stomach wasn’t accepting it, man. So it took me a while to recover…I had to do it slowly…Around 2 A.M. I started to feel better. I was 100% the next day but I don’t know, I always tell my students that the weighing in is very important. Maybe not so much for a three-round right but if it is a five-round fight, it will make a difference.”
Teixeira finished by not admitting that the weight cut had anything to do with his performance; instead, he was telling the story.
There have been many botched weight cuts leading to losses in the UFC. Is Teixeira the lastest victim? No one knows except for the Brazilian.
