Michael Chiesa Quotes

I think a lot of fighters are cutting way too much weight.

I think they need to start doing cageside weigh-ins again. I think that's the best way to go if you really want to see some difference. Cageside weigh-ins; I guarantee you won't see people cutting more than five to eight pounds, and they'll be fighting closer to their natural weight class.

It was tough to make weight against Cerrone, and I passed out three times making weight for the Eddie Alvarez fight. One day you get to the limit.

I don't want to go that route where I'm going into fights dehydrated. I used to fight at 170 pounds. I was 10-0 at 170 with eight knockouts. I'm not going to listen to somebody from the outside tell me what weight I should be fighting at.

I think between 2014 and 2015, I made weight five times in 11 months. During that time, I felt my body change. It was able to hold on to more weight. And anybody who makes weight knows that it gets harder and harder to make weight once you've done it that many times.

Cutting to featherweight took months of intense weight cutting and training. Going to lightweight, I can fight more often.

I don't cut weight, so it's no problem for me to fight at lightweight.

I had trouble making weight before in my career.

I've always seen myself as a big light heavyweight fighter, I have a big frame and walk around quite heavy. So I've always had to cut around 33 lbs to make weight.

The problem with these UFC fighters - and they're all fantastic athletes, top of the line in the entire world - is that they wear their bodies down in these training camps. All these guys that are cutting weight are just destroying their own bodies.

To have the athletes weigh in on a stage, televised, it makes no sense. Holding us at weight to run us through medicals and a staging process, it lengthens the time we're depleting ourselves.

Cutting weight is always rough, especially for guys like myself that make a significant cut to make a number.

To be just straight up honest, Conor McGregor is a guy that fought at 145 - ever in his life. I haven't weighed 145 since my sophomore year of high school.

I can eat whatever I want, and I don't get over 145 pounds. A lot of the guys who fight at 125 pounds, they get pretty big, and when it gets closer to the fight, they're walking around at 135 pounds. For me, I try to stay the same weight I typically walk around at.

I don't think people realize what those weight cuts were doing to me. It took so much out of me to make 155. I wish I could put into words what it was like, to be able to paint the picture of my weight cuts, but I can't. All I can say is that every fight week was a complete misery.

I wrestled at 165 pounds in college. I would actually cut from 205 pounds down to 165, and it wasn't really a big deal for me. With me wrestling all of the time, my body got used to it.

It's taken me 26 professional fights to seek out nutritional help and I finally did and it's made a big change in my weight as far as weight cutting goes.

I believe everybody feels better when they don't cut too much weight.

Before I fought Adonis Stevenson in 2013, I had 4lbs to shift in a morning before weighing in. I had zero energy left to train, so the nutritional adviser said the only way was to drag it from my body in a hot bath full of salts.

You know, I'm never really 100-percent in any of those fights, because it's so hard to have perfect preparation for fighting and cutting weight and making 170 pounds, and being in the best shape for training camp and to make that cut.

I'm more vicious in sparring when I am around 160 pounds or coming down from heavier than that.

But I am a big welterweight so I can see why people think that I would look to move up the weights.

The first time I fought Ian McCall, I cut carbs completely out of my diet all through training camp. I was afraid I wasn't going to make weight, that I'd get on the scale, and it would be all, 'He weighs 128,' and the people would throw cabbage at me. I basically cut all carbs on the diet, just eat chicken and greens all the time.

I feel like I'm the only fighter who has ever missed weight in UFC, to be honest. Anyone, when we talk about weight now it's Darren Till, Darren Till. I missed weight, and people just need to get off it.

I never did steroids in my life. I know all the fighters; they are all on steroids.