10 Things You Can Only Experience At A UFC Live Event
9. How Massive The Largest Weight Classes Are
That rather large gentleman above is Corey "Overtime" Anderson, a UFC Light Heavyweight and winner of The Ultimate Fighter Season 19 (against Matt Van Bruen, last seen trying out for the WWE).
Large? Massive!
Zoom out, pan up. Despite fighting at a reasonable 205lbs, Anderson, who stands at 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m), was no doubt walking around much heavier than that come fight night. UFC fighters cut a massive amount of weight heading into a fight, to capitalize on a perceived size advantage in the cage. It's a trick carried over from amateur wrestling, and can lead to serious health complications. Essentially, fighters will diet down weeks or months out from the fight, then begin cutting water weight (read: dehydrating themselves) in the final days prior to the contest.
Then, having made weight (presumably) twenty-four hours or so before the fight, they'll blimp back up, re-hydrating and gaining up to twenty-percent of their body weight back — or more!
So in the case of someone like Anderson, he could easily have gained twenty to thirty pounds back by the time he met opponent Patrick Cummins in the cage. Making an already massive human being that much bigger, and that's a fighter not even in the heavyweight division.