It wasn’t his fault, he didn’t even realize he was touching that towel.
Last Friday when the UFC touched down in Buffalo, Daniel Cormier was caught in a weigh-ins controversy he’d still be forced to deal with days later.
By now we all know what happened, D.C. grabbed the towel while on the scale and miraculously lost 1.2 pounds.
Now he explains what happened.
Via The MMA Hour:
“My weight was good. Wednesday morning, I’d guess I was like 218, but I could just feel like I wasn’t losing as much as I would lose normally. Whereas, if I would go and work out for an hour and lose eight pounds, (instead) I was losing five-and-a-half pounds. So I was like, ‘alright, this is going to be a little bit of a tougher cut, so I know Thursday is going to be rough.’
“This was the hardest one by far. I think the beginning of my 205-pound career was easier because I was fighting so often. Like, if you remember, I fought Patrick Cummins, then I fought Dan Henderson, then I fought (Jon) Jones and I fought (Alexander) Gustafsson, ‘Rumble.’ They were all within the first year-and-a-half. So every three or four months, I was fighting; whereas now, after Gustafsson, it was like nine months (until UFC 200), and then this time again it was like eight months. So it’s just a lot of time between fights. Just, I need to be a little more active, so that my weight doesn’t get as high, and also my body gets used to the weight cut again.”
“When I went down, my scale in the room said I was on-weight, so I figured I was good. But I was tired. I was really tired. I was exhausted. If you watch as I walk onto the scale, I was kinda almost staggering because the weight cut was a little harder than I anticipated it being.”
“Oh my goodness, what is happening? Like, how could this possibly be happening? How am I going to lose this championship on the scale?
“I was complaining, like, ‘the scale is not right.’ I was like, ‘this is BS, I want to re-weigh. This is some BS, my scale said I was 205.’ I said also, ‘I’ve been checking all week, I don’t understand what the issue is.’ And then they said, ‘well you can go re-weigh, but you also have two hours because it’s a championship fight.’ So (we figured) go re-weigh, and if I didn’t make it then, go back and lose the extra pound. They informed me in the back while I was complaining, but I didn’t know it at the time. My issue mostly was with feeling like my scale was right, because I paid $600 for a brand new scale.”
“When I got off the scale the first time, I walked away, and they didn’t cover me. So obviously, a guy thinks that he’s losing everything that he’s worked for on the scale, and we just walk back off the scale and nobody even worried about protecting me. So I was like, you know what, I’m going to hold the towel a little bit myself to make sure that I’m covered.
“Now, the reality is, I didn’t even realize I was doing that until I saw pictures, honestly. I’ve got to be completely honest with you, I didn’t even realize I was doing that. I was tired. I was very discouraged and upset because of after that had just happened, so I didn’t even realize that I was doing it.”
“Honestly, man, my team was standing with Anthony’s team in the back and they spoke to a couple of his coaches, and they said he been working out and not losing weight. They said that ‘Rumble’ had worked out for like an hour-and-a-half and lost .8 pounds, and they were thinking, ‘this dude ain’t going to make weight either.’ Then he goes in and he’s the exact amount of weight under as I was the second time I stepped on the scale.
“So I don’t know what was happening with that scale, but yeah, they were concerned that he wasn’t going to (make it). He said it himself. He’s like, ‘man, I was in the same situation as you,’ so obviously we both had some issues with our scales, or the commission had a scale issue. I don’t know.”
