UFC Liverpool was an event that centered largely around the botched weight-cut of local star, Darren Till. In the fallout since the UFC has been in a continual spiral of trying to find a way to clamp down on the issue. However, Craig White recently disclosed that he shed a monster amount of weight on two weeks notice for his UFC debut.
White is no stranger to the extreme weight cutting game. The British fighter is infamous for his picture which shows him covered in blood after his gory battle with John Redmond, a fight that he cut nearly 40 pounds in order to compete in.
Following the call from the UFC that offered him the bout against Neil Magny, White felt a throwback to his bout against Redmond (via MMAFighting.com):
“For the John Redmond fight, I did 17 kilos (37-pounds) in nine days, it was horrendous. I got rid of eight kilos of water at that time. I had never used salt baths before that. I genuinely felt like I was going to die when I was walking to the scales that time,” White said.
“Of course, I said I’d never do it again. I promised my coach and my girlfriend that I’d never do it again. Then, the phone rings about two weeks before UFC Liverpool and Graham Boylan is asking me if I’m available to fight Neil Magny.”
“At that moment, the Redmond cut was the first thing that crossed my mind. At that stage, I was out of camp and I was the heaviest I’d ever been. All I could hear in my head was, ‘You’re 98 kilos what the f*ck are you doing?’ Two seconds later I accepted the fight.”
Despite not having confirmation that he was fighting, White began the process of the weight cut. The next two weeks were made up of four workouts a day and a 600 calorie meal per day. The meal was a singular piece of meat and enough leaves to convince White he was having a full meal. Though, despite the rough schedule, he still encountered issues.
“I got stuck at about 87 kilos. You always get to a stage where you begin to plateau and that was it for me. The thing is, you know it usually takes a few days for the weight to start moving again, but I really didn’t have all that much time to work with. I ended up doing a monstrous session and suddenly I was 84 kilos.”
Alongside his massive weight-cut, Craig White also had the burden of extra media obligations that he was not used to dealing with.
“Another new thing was the additional media and the open workout. In my head, I couldn’t let anybody see how badly I was feeling because that could’ve given my opponent some kind of psychological advantage.”
Can anything be done to stop massive weight cuts such as the one Craig White went through?
