Daniel Cormier May Have Just Cheated His Weigh in for UFC 210 With an Old Amateur Trick
Would you rather another scrapped UFC fight?
Earlier today, ahead of Saturday’s UFC 210 headlined by a Light Heavyweight Championship rematch between the current champion Daniel Cormier and Anthony Johnson, Cormier pulled off one of the oldest tricks in the book to cheat a weigh-in. As you can see in the video above, “things are peculating” as the champ staggers in — likely from rigorously attempting to cut weight — just minutes before the required 11 a.m. check-in in Buffalo, New York. After tipping the scale to 206.2, 1.2 pounds above the required weight of 205, Cormier walks out of the room, only to return two minutes later. He then steps on the scale, the official belts out 205, and everyone cheers, completely ignoring Cormier leaning on the towel in front of him — which he denies in the tweet below.
First, he admits that he was preventing everyone from seeing his junk, then he told FOX Sports it was a faulty scale. “It was crazy, I weighed in upstairs and I was like ‘Man I’m OK, I’m going to do this. It was harder than normally, but we figured we had it done, the scale was weighing different.”
The New York State Athletic Commission approved Cormier’s second weight in, which is not allowed in most jurisdictions, due to a published policy that allows fighters a second weigh-in up to two hours later. ESPN however reports that it has not located that policy. When asked about the towel thing, NYSAC Executive Officer Tony Giardina bluntly said “I didn’t see that.”
“I would have made weight then or made it two hours later,” Cormier said. “I had a pound when the scale was weighing the way it was weighing, I would have lost a pound in two hours and still made weight.”
Cormier’s challenger, Johnson, weighed in at 203.8.
Whatever your take on it all, at least another good title fight isn’t being scrapped from a UFC event.
Here’s Cormier on the towel pic.twitter.com/wtZEgpGAja
— Brett Okamoto (@bokamotoESPN) April 7, 2017
