I’m not a doctor, but I play one in UFC…
If the closest you ever got to a medical degree was a game of Operation, you may still qualify to oversee UFC weight cuts ahead of major MMA events.
Just ask welterweight veteran Matt Brown, who was instructed to stop cutting weight — for his own good — in front of his UFC on FOX 12 showdown against Robbie Lawler. “The Immortal” came in slightly over and planned to cut the remaining pounds; however, a phony physician instructed him to do otherwise.
Brown tells the story to MMA Fighting (transcribed by Milan Ordonez):
“I go in, get weighed in, half-pound over. While I’m sitting in the back, this guy comes up, posing as one of the doctors there. And he said, ‘Yeah, I’ve seen you out there, I’ve seen you cutting weight…’ And he said, ‘You can’t cut no more weight. You need to rehydrate.’
“I was like, ‘Okay, if I have to, you’re the doctor telling me.’ He’s like, ‘I’m not gonna let you cut no more weight.’ Dana comes over, like, five minutes later and he goes, ‘Hey, did somebody just tell you not to cut weight?’ I said, ‘Yes, some doctor.’ He goes, ‘That dude’s not a doctor. I don’t know who that guy is.’ I guess he had told somebody else that missed weight also.
“We meet with Dana in the back and I said I can still go cut the weight. I just put on an extra two or three pounds with this water. And he said, ‘Don’t worry about it, we’re not taking your 20 percent. Robbie was there, he was cool with it.’ And that was that.”
Brown lost their “Fight of the Night” by way of unanimous decision.
This is hardly the first (and certainly won’t be the last) time a UFC weigh-in was clouded by controversy. Some recent examples include the Brazilian screwjob, the “DC” towel trick, the Canadian loophole, and the “Prime Time” seizure, just to name a few.
As for Brown, the identity of his phantom physician has yet to be revealed.