Making weight for a fight is as brutal a process as it gets for fighters.
Most fighters generally walk around heavier than the weight division they fight in and have to rapidly lose weight for the scale, before rehydrating for the fight.
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Words exchanged during tense face-off | 00:52
While all except the heavyweights have to cut weight before a fight, competitors employ any trick they can, including saunas and sweat suits to dehydrate themselves, as well as eating as few as 350 calories in a day to lose an average of around 9kg in the final five days for UFC fighters.
And if fighters miss weight, they generally have an extra hour or two to make the limit.
It can be an awful process but UFC middleweight king Israel Adesanya revealed a … unique way of shedding those final grams.
Taylor Rooks from Bleacher Report had a sit down with the champion and asked the Nigerian born New Zealander the craziest thing he’s had to do to make weight.
After hemming and hawing, no one was expecting his answer.
“I just … what the f**k, f**king hell. Back in kickboxing back in the day when I was kickboxing when I was really young … I didn’t have the fight dietitian, the guy who looks after us with my meals and whatnot, I didn’t have him on deck. I was not in the UFC … ah f**k man … Okay, how do I put this … I busted a nut to make weight,” Adesanya said as both burst into laughter.
Rooks responded: “Rewind …” before Adesanya interjected: “Let’s not go into that story.”
“I’m not going to ask specifics of that part,” Rooks said. “But how much does that weigh?”
“You really want to know?” Adesanya said.
“At the time I was young and I was on that whole no before a fight, before I knew it was a myth.
“And then yeah, a few grams came off, 100 grams.”
Rooks said: “You made weight.”
“I made weight,” Adesanya confirmed with a smile.
“But I wouldn’t advise it. I was younger back then, 21 or 22, I didn’t know what I was doing with weight cutting and yeah, that was something.”
For the record, the average male ejaculation is 1.25mL to 5mL.
Rooks’ Bleacher report producer Rachel Roderman tweeted: “This was literally one of the funniest moments we’ve ever recorded on the show. The build up. The answer. The follow up Q. Never a dull moment on @TaylorRooks X! And as always, appreciate the honesty from our guests, no matter the topic.”
Sportscaster Chris Williamson posted: “Nothing could’ve prepared me for what I just heard lmaoooooo.”
Adesanya will defend his middleweight crown for the sixth time on Sunday (Australian time) when he takes on old rival Alex Pereira.
Pereira defeated Adesanya twice as kickboxers, winning a 2016 decision before a 2017 knockout.
Now both men are in the UFC, Adesanya said Pereira, who is preparing for just his fourth fight in the octagon, said at the UFC 281 press conference that all his bragging rights “can’t save you either when you walk in there with me”.
“For me, I’ve pretty much cleaned out the division and now I’m lapping it again. So I cleared the way,” Adesanya said.
“He should be grateful. He wouldn’t be here without me.
“My run to the title was a lot more impressive than what he’s done. So he should be grateful he is here because of me.”
Pereira shot back, saying he’d beat Adesanya “as many times as I’m asked to do” as well as claiming the New Zealander had been running from the fight.
“There’s a lot of people who think I wasn’t deserving, including Adesanya and his team,” Pereira said of his rapid rise to a title shot.
“Originally when I came into the UFC, he said he wanted to fight me.
“But as soon as I started to fight people, they changed the narrative, they spun things around, started to run around and said ‘maybe I don’t want to face him again’.
“I think I screwed his mind a little bit.
“I think he’s a little bit unbalanced psychologically on this one.”
