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

[Poirierfan]

I take it that most of you guys didn't read everything, That shit about his kidneys must have been scary.

 

[Pilo]

Wow....what a crock of shit, seriously. So he'd recommend to anyone who runs a marathon to use an IV after? LOL pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaase.

Why even bother having weight classes in the very first place, then, if you're gonna let a 210 pound guy fight at 170...the IV ban only exposed how out of hand the situation was. How is it unfair if everyone can do it, some might ask?

LWs and WWs were looking like fucking LHWs. If you're competing at 170 and don't want to cut 30 fucking pounds of water before every fight and ruin your kidneys, you should not be pressured to do so because out of the 30 guys competing in your division, 25 do that and now that division is, in reality, a division filled with guys who should actually compete at 185. Great thing USADA banned the IV use.

 

[Thepaintbucket]

Cliffs: Johny Hendricks blames the IV ban for everything regarding his sharp decline.

 

[Max_P]

"Professional" athlete... meaning ... he fights for money ... to make a living and is not disciplined enough to take care of his weight...

This guy is a colossal idiot. Good wrestler with Knock Out power... wastes life eating shit food...

 

[CodyMckenziesPrime]

Gsp beat a ped abuser on an unfair playing field. Gsp took the tests and offerered to pay for hendricks’ Hendricks declined.

 

[in the liver]

Bah, you guys are just jealous!



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

i dont believe you

 

[The XL]

He talks like being 210lbs at 25% bodyfat in between fights is a good thing......

 

[tenniswhiz]

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.

Agree, but the IV made it possible to do that before.

He is telling the fans that he wasn’t roiding, that it was the IV’s that allowed him to be an elite WW.

There are others that probably miss the IV’s.
I am guessing Chris Weidman is one.

 

[Mixedfights]

the IV rule is one of the dumbest, negligent rules they put on athletes.

I agree. I believe hes always been stocky as hell. Some guys just carry weight man. Could he be thinner? Probably but dude would be on a constant diet and never be 100% for the absolute beat down Professional MMA training is.

Hes probably right about the ivs. Have you ever got hammered and went to one of those iv places? Its like fuckin magic. And hour later and your good as new.

 

[clutchCAT420]

F your iv bags and f usada too. And f Dana as well

 

[2GunTommy]

He has a legit food addiction. In college his coaches would have a spy follow him around so he couldn't sneak off and go to Burger King. Once he told them he was going to Walmart or something and he used that trip to sneak off and eat fast food.

He can't stop eating.

He definitely is a food addict.

 

[Fluffernutter]

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

If he walked around at 210 since he was 19 years old, how did he make weight in college? He wrestled 165 lbs.

 

[Viking Power]

Johnny is just so eloquent.

 

[Yung Dilla]

He's lying in that one UFC special he said he walked around 225-230 because he liked to eat his food. Right around the time he opened his food joint.

 

[HaulParris]

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

 

[John makfresshi]

"ballooned out due to the weight cut"

Sure thing Johny. Sherdoggers are all overweight because they cut weight...

Overweight because im 6'2" 270 and jacked. And im on the shorter side of the sherdog BMI listings

 

[nhbfan8080]

I think he has a fair point about the iv ban. I think we'd see alot better fights if it was reintroduced.

Pre usada Hendricks was a thing. And not necessarily because he was using gear like alot of people have said before but because of the iv thing. I think Hendricks' assessment is fair.

No he really doesn't at all. He's had a long history of being undisciplined on his eating and is more of a fat WW instead of a very big one, so he only has himself to blame.

The IV ban is a very good thing since its supposed to deter athletes from extreme weight cuts which means less stress on the body and have better health in the long run. It also helps make fights fairer. And it helps anti doping orgs detect plasticizers in cheaters who blood dope.

But people like Hendricks continue to do their same drastic weight cutting without having iv replenishment and complain about it like goofs afterwards instead of moving up a weight class. Amateur wrestling in the US have adopted the same iv ban and other measures to reduce weight cutting and there isn't any belly aching from them to go back to the old ways.

 

[Haj01]

No he really doesn't at all. He's had a long history of being undisciplined on his eating and is more of a fat WW instead of a very big one, so he only has himself to blame.

The IV ban is a very good thing since its supposed to deter athletes from extreme weight cuts which means less stress on the body and have better health in the long run. It also helps make fights fairer. And it helps anti doping orgs detect plasticizers in cheaters who blood dope.

But people like Hendricks continue to do their same drastic weight cutting without having iv replenishment and complain about it like goofs afterwards instead of moving up a weight class. Amateur wrestling in the US have adopted the same iv ban and other measures to reduce weight cutting and there isn't any belly aching from them to go back to the old ways.

Whilst I can agree with what your saying. At the end of the day I watch mma because it's entertaining. So if IV's = healthier fighters on fight night then I'm all for it. A healthy fighter is better than a deflated fighter. Prime Hendricks was a monster! With one punch KO power that legit put people out cold.

We can all say these fighters should move up weight...this and that. But the reality is that most of them don't. I'd rather give those fighters a better chance to recover.

At the end of the day I just want to see the fighters at their best because it means we get the best fights. I want trt back baby!

 

[Ken Oath]

Has he tried not being a fat slob?

 

[Ghostoftheville]

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.

No one is forcing fighters to cut an inordinate amount of weight that causes their health issues in the first place.