So we are about a week removed from the official cancellation of UFC 249, yet Tony Ferguson seems set on making the championship weight, why?
How much does Tony cut to make 155?
Now I understand that he wants to show the true champion mind-set by making the 155lbs weight limit but surely this is just unnecessary at this point. I am not sure what Tony weighs normally, some articles from 2017 alluded to him ballooning up to north of 200lbs.
Now I think this particular tweet showing Tony on the scales at 200.4lbs is probably not accurate, I mean the photo doesn’t even show Tony, just what are allegedly his feet on the scales. Now even if this was accurate on that particular occasion it was after the fight so maybe he had treated himself and weighed in at his heaviest.
Either way I think it is safe to say that Tony does not walk around at 155lbs, so he is at least cutting some weight. This is slightly irresponsible on his part in my opinion because we have all seen the dangers of a weight cut throughout the years in MMA.
Bad weight cuts are not uncommon in MMA
One of the most notable examples of a bad cut was prior to the UFC creating the 145 women’s division where we saw Cris Cyborg Santos go through some truly horrific weight cuts. Most MMA fans saw the images and video of her crying in the bath that was just haunting.
Even the lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov has fallen foul of a bad weight cut and been hospitalised as a result. After a certain point it is not uncommon for the kidneys to shut down and all sorts of complications can arise due to the weight cutting process.
I am not a doctor but as noted above there are just so many documented cases of weight cuts going wrong that I think we can all agree that it is just not good for you. We mainly see the extreme cases such as Anthony Johnson cutting to welterweight, and the famous image of Connor McGregor cutting down to 145lbs for the Jose Aldo fight.
At the point of weighing in McGregor looked ill, he looked like he was on death’s door. Now Tony’s weight cut is nowhere near as brutal as those examples but let’s face it he still has to cut a fair amount of weight, and there is always inherent risk with that process as we have seen.
Championship mindset
Now I clearly don’t understand the championship mindset that Ferguson possesses, I am not going to pretend to even try. The guys that step up to this level are made of something different to myself, they have a drive and motivation that I just can’t begin to understand.
With that being said could one of Tony’s trainers please tell him that the fight is off and that there is no need to put yourself through a weight cut just for the sake of it. Especially as the UFC are looking to schedule you for a fight on May 9th, where you just might have to go and make weight again.
Now I get it, Tony Ferguson’s whole persona is doing crazy things in training, kicking metal poles etc. Just scroll his twitter feed and you can see that he is eccentric in the way he trains and the way he carries himself. I get that he has this mentality but with the prospect of him being called on to fight again potentially so soon, surely one of his trainers could have stepped in.
I get it, I don’t understand the mentality of #champs**tonly how could I, I just sit on the couch and watch people punch each other in the face for entertainment.
So maybe he needs to do this, but as a fan of Tony I just don’t want to see something bad happen when there is absolutely no upside. I am all for risk takers, risk equals reward right? What is the reward for cutting weight with no fight on?
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