Johny Hendricks explains how USADA played role in UFC retirement decision, details scary weight cut

[Coconutwater]

You either let fighters do everything medically possible or you draw the line somewhere. I think the average person on the street would consider having to use IVs to recover from making weight to be quite extreme and wouldn't consider that a normal part of the game.

True.

You either make the weight with dieting and a basic cutting regimen and hydrate by actually drinking electrolytes. If you’re still feeling depleted or bloated, move up a class.

 

[savemgs]

Hendricks has never fought at 100%. You don’t want to see 100% Hendricks.

Hundred percent Hendricks versus motivated BJ Penn?

 

[Coconutwater]

Never been a fan of this guy, but he’s dead on with the IV ban. It’s a shit rule and only puts fighters at risk.

They should just implement the rules One uses in Asia. I think they weigh people multiple times a year and figure out their more natural weight and force them to compete at that weight. Some dude either died or was hospitalized so the commission forced the change.

 

[muaytao]

lol did you meet the man himself?

johny gets a lot of hate round here but i used to love his fights. his title run was great, he arguably beat georges, his fights with robbie were fcking great

His fights with Robbie were boring af. He had his head in Robbie crotch

 

[Human Bass]

He is short and with a small reach, he could be 195lbs lean if he wasn't such a connoisseur.

 

[aerius]

WW Don't walk around 210lbs, or they shouldn't. Cutting 40lbs is just fucking stupid

210 is fucking Rumbleweight.

 

[in the liver]

His fights with Robbie were boring af. He had his head in Robbie crotch

heh, the first one got fight of the night. you're just a hater and you don't know wtf you're talking about

 

[Sansnom]

Why was it so hard for him to just move up to middleweight or even light heavyweight?

Because he is 5"9 and has a shitty reach. Just look at his fight against Paulo Costa. He got towered and couldn't close the distance.

 

[juanM3]

Wtf dude says he walks around at 210, yet cuts to fight at 170 and wants to complain about not getting to use iv bags. Move up a weight class you fucking coward.

He did. And still missed weight at MW!

I doubt he ever walked around at 190. I don't know when some of those pictures were taken, but he's definitely over 200 in them. And if he walked around at 190 after USADA, how do you miss weight at 185??

 

[Daniel4802]

He still blames everything else but himself.

When competing in a weight class sport, you don't get fat and do crash diets to hurry and get your weight down. You'll lose excess lean mass, screwing up your body composition which means you'll have less water to be able to dehydrate every time.

 

[Local Plata]

So not being able to use IVs somehow made him miss weight? That doesn't make any sense.

 

[Brettco]

Monday on The MMA Hour, Hendricks admitted that he believes USADA’s presence in the UFC played a major role in how the final chapters of his run played out — but not in the way some would expect.

“I think USADA’s a great thing for the athletes, because it’s making people be clean, right? I took 26 tests, never failed one of the them. And that was in two years; I took 26 tests, never failed one of them. But what hurts the MMA aspect is that you can’t [use] IV bags,” Hendricks said Monday on The MMA Hour. “So, I’m a bigger welterweight, I walk around at 210. I’ve done that since I was 19 years old, walk around at 210, and the IV always brought me back. It helped me get back to life, it helped me get to where I didn’t feel like I cut weight. And once USADA come into play, I had to start walking around like 190 at best, and as you can tell, I do carry a lot of weight ... and that’s sort of one reason why it just made it that much harder to make weight at 170.

“I’m just not in the sport to just be in a sport. Does that make sense? I can do other things. If I’m going to do it, I want to be the best, and I know welterweight is my best. That’s where I should be. Now, like I’d said, I loved the fact of USADA and I loved that you do the random drug testing. I just wish that, they have a lot of people that show up at these meets — you want to do an IV, have them test you every day. I’m perfectly fine with that. You show up Monday, you get tested. Tuesday, you get tested. Wednesday, you get tested. Thursday, if you have any pee left, you can get tested on Thursday. They’re there testing the IV bags, they’re doing everything like that, and I think you can bring back IVs, because I think there’s a lot of people that really used the IVs to help them fight better.

“Once you took that away, you started to see some of these guys, they either had to move up or they stayed at their normal weight and they didn’t perform like they used to.”

Hendricks went 1-5 over his next six contests after the USADA program began, and at one point missed weight three times over a four-fight span. He had weigh-in scares prior to USADA, but never had actually missed weight up to that point. And Hendrick said Monday that USADA entering the sport and immediately banning IV use to assist with weight cutting became a major blow to his ability to compete at the highest level.

“I tell everybody, go run 26 miles, take an IV. The next day you’re going to be sore, but guess what? You feel like you can run again,” Hendricks said. “It’s an amazing thing. All the vitamins, all the minerals that you’re pulling from your body, irons and stuff like that your body really needs to compete at a high level, definitely whenever you’re fighting in the UFC, you need those back in your muscles. A perfect example: Without them, I think I was fighting at maybe 50 percent. With them, I was fighting right around 90 percent, because my body was able to recover after that hard weight cut.”


Hendricks said the accumulated damage from his repeated weight cuts became an overwhelming force in his life after a year without IV use. He said things came to a head following his Dec. 2016 fight against Neil Magny. That fight proved to be his final outing at 170 pounds, and his body did not handle the stress of the situation well.

“After the last time I fought 170, my kidneys shut down. I ballooned out,” Hendricks explained. “So, let’s see, I fought on Saturday. On Sunday night I got home, I was 219, and I blew up like a balloon. My doctor was like, ‘Hey, you need to go to the hospital.’ I was like, I know exactly what’s going on, my kidneys shut down. And I guess it went on for about four or five days. On Thursday, they rebooted, and whenever that happened, I went from 219 to 199 in like 24 hours, and I didn’t work out or nothing. That’s when I was like, ‘You know what, I’m going to kill myself.’ And that’s the thing, with IVs, the damage that you do by cutting weight, [the IV] helps you not kill yourself, because like I said, all that stuff that’s important to your body, you can’t get it back in 36 hours. You can’t get it back in 48 hours.

“But with an IV, it goes straight into your veins, it goes straight into your muscles, in your organs, and it sends [everything] exactly where it needs to for you to recover the best you can. That’s why in every sport, what do they do? In every sport, if you’re hurting or you’re this or you’re that, they give you IVs. They’re a huge part. I remember back in the day, I liked to take them on Wednesdays. I’d take like a half of a bag on Wednesday, just so that way it’d keep me from getting sick, it helped where I could train harder — so on Wednesday, I would start fading on my training, and then I would take an IV bag in the middle of the day, I could train hard on Wednesday night, Thursday, Friday, and it was like a brand new me.”

Hendricks said he briefly considered exploring a move to Bellator or another promotion outside of the UFC, but by that point he was simply ready to move on to the next chapter of his fighting life. He’ll now do so on Nov. 9 when he makes his bare-knuckle boxing debut against one-time Bellator title challenger Brennan Ward at the World Bare Knuckle Fighting Federation’s inaugural event, and all things considered, Hendricks said he is happy and content with his decision.

“I just got to a point where sometimes it’s how much you’re going to talk to get something,” Hendricks said. “How bad does the press want to follow you? How much are you going to talk trash about this guy, this guy, this guy, to get the fight? And for me, I’ve always been the guy that, talking trash is easy, but for me, I just wanted to try something [different]. Realistically, I’ve wanted to try out boxing for a little bit, and whenever the bare knuckle TV, they came after me, they talked to me, I was pretty excited because I want to see how my hands are.

“I’ve been wanting to find out for a while: How good is my striking? Because I’ve gone with some very, very talented boxers here in Texas, and it’s just been a dream of mine. I’ve been a huge boxing fan all my life. I grew up watching (Mike) Tyson, I grew up watching the old classics, and that’s sort of where my next pull led me.”

https://www.mmafighting.com/platfor...&utm_source=twitter&__twitter_impression=true

do you know what he is a saying?

 

[El_Dyablo619]

So with the I.V. ban he fights at 50%, with I.V. he fights at 90%, but yet punches at 70%.....

 

[TeddyT]

You two fucking morons realize that he was fighting at 185 at 5'9" with like a 67" reach, right?

Sorry Johny weight classes are based on... Weight! DC and Mike Tyson are 5'10" didn't stop those hw greats. Take your lone crusade up with the state athletic commissions.

 

[FaTaL FaTaL]

Dude sounds like a drug addict, cutting 40 pounds is not normal

 

[AP_RESURRECTION]

Damn ain't no mercy for Johny boy here... Damn shame what happened to him.

Yea honestly I typically would defend fighters when the sherdog mob starts group hating. But reading this article, it is unbelievable what he’s saying. This interview basically is evidence that fighters are forced to cut less weroght, something most of us want. He seems to think something has been taken away from him but the fact is that people like him are going to kill them elves for a size advantage.

 

[aerius]

So with the I.V. ban he fights at 50%, with I.V. he fights at 90%, but yet punches at 70%.....

Remember, this is the man who said he was only one pound over the limit a day before weigh-ins...then missed weight by 3lbs...

 

[AJ Garcia]

Wtf dude says he walks around at 210, yet cuts to fight at 170 and wants to complain about not getting to use iv bags. Move up a weight class you fucking coward.

I wouldn’t call him a coward. He’s not some giant ww trying to fight a bunch of guys he dwarfs. He’s just a fat ass and has no discipline. It’s still his own fault and he has no one to blame but himself but we all saw him move up and saw the size difference between him and an actual MW in Costa. I legit felt bad for Hendricks watching that and I don’t even like the guy.

Again, this is no ones fault but his own for ballooning up when he’s not fighting. In fact, banning IV’s played no part in him missing weight. It’s not like he would’ve made weight if he could’ve hooked himself up to an IV after. He could walk at 190 and have an easy cut like most WW’s but he chooses not to.

I do think the IV ban is retarded tho.

 

[My2Cents]

Didnt read the whole fucking thing, but Why not move up and fight at a more natural weight class????

 

[Chris Gaines]

You had a feast in a place that closed 2+ years ago?

last week? That place shut down 2 years ago.

Bah, you guys are just jealous!

lol did you meet the man himself?

Yeah, he sat down for a quick beer. We shot the shit, he told us about the training, the Prime Rib, etc...