Michael Chiesa has opened up his horrible weight cut for his fight at UFC 226.
On Friday (July 6, 2018), Chiesa took the scale to weigh in for his lightweight showdown but came in at 157.5, which is a 1.5 pounds overweight for this scheduled 155-pound fight.
As soon as the weight was made publicly, Chiesa stated that this is his final fight at 155, which means he is headed to welterweight to compete in the 170-pound division. It was also revealed that he will not re-weigh himself.
If you recall, these fighters were slated to fight each other at the UFC 223 pay-per-view event in April in Brooklyn, NY. However, the bout got scrapped once Chiesa suffered facial lacerations when former UFC featherweight and lightweight champ Conor McGregor decided to throw a dolly through the window of a van while trying to get to Khabib Nurmagomedov.
As seen in the lightweight showdown at Saturday’s (July 7, 2018) UFC 226 pay-per-view event at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, Pettis was able to score a submission win over the rising contender.
Chiesa spoke with Ariel Helwani on his MMA show on ESPN where he detailed the bad weight cut. He did bring up that a foot injury did play a factor into missing weight.
“I can’t emphasize this enough, Ariel: I seriously thought I was going to die,” Chiesa said. “Going through the first part of my weight cut, on Thursday, I really thought I was going to kill myself and I’m not exaggerating in the slightest.”
“Ultimately my body had nothing to give,” he said. “When you can’t do road work for a week-and-a-half, that’s really hard on your weight cut. I came into fight week at 175 pounds, and usually I come into fight week at 169, 168 pounds. It was just too much for my body to handle.
“We cut weight for eight hours. We cut for four hours on Thursday night and I was up at 5 a.m. cutting weight on the day of weigh-ins [Friday] and my body had nothing more to give. I’m not exaggerating: I thought I was going to die. In the middle of the night before the Friday weigh-ins, I woke up and started having a panic attack. I broke down and started crying and was like, ‘I think I’m going to die.’
“I’ve never felt like this. I made 155 my whole career without a hitch and it never feels good, but it’s never like this, never in my life.”
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