Daniel Cormier on strange UFC 210 weigh-in: ‘It was crazy’

For a minute, UFC 210 looked like it had been turned upside down. UFC light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier stepped on the scale more than a pound overweight for his headlining title defense against Anthony Johnson. UFC policy dictates that fighters only get one shot at the scale, and it seemed that Cormier would have to drop his title. Luckily the fight took place in New York, which gives fighters two hours to make weight after the first attempt, so he got another shot.

Oddly though, it didn’t take two hours. It took about two minutes for Cormier to hit 205, which still holding a towel.

Cormier explained to Fox Sports 1 what happened (via MMA Fighting):

“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.”

“We went in the back and they informed me that the New York state rule is you can actually re-weigh, and if you don’t make it, you have two hours to actually make the weight, so I started feeling pretty confident after that.”

“I would have made weight then or made it two hours later,” Cormier continued. “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 says he was holding the towel just to hide his junk. Others believe it may have been a way to manipulate his weight on the scale in order to hit 205. Nonetheless, the UFC 210 headliner is now official.