Johny Hendricks and the welterweight division have split and the IV ban for weight cutting didn’t help matters.
“Bigg Rigg” is a former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) welterweight title holder, but he’s moving up to the 185-pound division due to weight cutting issues. Hendricks was forced to pull out of his scheduled bout with Tyron Woodley at UFC 192, and then missed weight for his fights with Kelvin Gastelum and Neil Magny.
Hendricks appeared on the UFC Unfiltered Podcast (via Flo Combat) and explained how the IV ban has impacted weight cutting:
“Like I said, yes, cutting weight, people, the average fan doesn’t understand it, and obviously, people on Twitter don’t understand. Here’s the thing, look, the IV ban, and you ask anybody, I ask anybody to do this, go run yourself, go workout really hard one day. I don’t care if you’ve worked out before in your life–go workout and then right afterwards, go get yourself an IV and oh my gosh you are going to feel like you didn’t workout yesterday. I get why we don’t need IVs and I get it that a lot of people cutting a lot of weight like me are having a hard time with it. For me, that’s 185 so that’s what I’m doing. Even right now I feel like I have the power to hit hard and I have the endurance to do that. I’m hoping to see this fight that I can go out there and not care. I’m just going to be, that’s my goal–to be like I used to be. I want to go out there, throw heavy haymakers and see what happens.”
Hendricks is set to face Hector Lombard at a UFC Fight Night event in Halifax this Sunday night (Feb. 19). The card will be headlined by a heavyweight tilt between Travis Browne and Derrick Lewis.
