Whoever said, “let it snow” clearly hasn’t been in the shoes of Thiago Santos.
Santos will be competing on this Sunday night’s (Feb. 19) Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Fight Night event in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Santiago Ponzinibbio also fights on the card and actually wound up in an unusual situation with Santos.
Both fighters couldn’t buy food due to the the snowstorm. Everything was closed. Santos explained to MMAFighting.com how he and Ponzinibbio helped each other in the process:
“We couldn’t even leave the hotel to go to the supermarket to buy food for my diet because it was closed, too. That was an issue. Santiago and I helped each other out, training and cutting weight, until my coaches got here today. It was a new experience, I’ve never been through something like that before. I think the biggest problem was the lack of specific training, the things we usually do on fight week, working out in the morning and techniques at night. That was a problem, but I don’t think it will affect me in the fight.”
If you’re wondering where Santos’ coaches, Otavio Duarte and Philip Lima were, they were stuck in New York waiting for the airport to open.
Meanwhile, Santos was forced to order food at the hotel. He said it was difficult to find the right food to closely match his diet.
“I had to order some things here at the hotel, but I don’t speak English very well, so I had to do mimics, adapt. It’s complicated because you can’t cook with regular oil, you have to use coconut oil, and no salt. You don’t prepare the food the way you prepare in a regular restaurant, and it still didn’t come the way it should in our diet. It’s always different, so my weight cut is not the way it should be on fight week.”
