Cynthia Calvillo Issues Statement On Frightening Weight Miss
The MMA world witnessed a concerning scene when Cynthia Calvillo missed weight in frightening fashion at the UFC Argentina early weigh-ins yesterday.
The miss was a brutal scene due to Calvillo barely being able to walk and then nearly falling off the scale when she got there. With weight cutting a serious issue in the UFC, it was expected she would not be able to fight Poliana Botelho in Buenos Aires tonight. However, doctors for the Brazilian MMA Athletic Commission (CABMMA) cleared her to fight once she had rehydrated.
She was fined 20 percent of her purse for missing weight and will compete tonight. Calvillo issued a statement to MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz on her weight miss. She revealed that she only had a couple pounds to drop yesterday morning, but couldn’t break a sweat when she woke up:
“Basically what happened is I started my period this week,” said Calvillo, who weighed in at 118 pounds. “We were kind of prepared for it, because we could feel the symptoms, but unfortunately this morning when we got up it was about 5:30 and I had two pounds to go.
“Then, I couldn’t cut any weight at all from 5:30 to 8 a.m. We tried everything and I could not break a sweat. Even when I got up to the scale, I was the same weight that I woke up at 5:30 in the morning.”
Cut Off From Cutting Weight
So with her own body’s physiology working against her, CABMMA decided to have Calvillo stop cutting weight at 9 a.m. According to them, she didn’t need to suffer any longer. Her body would simply retain the water weight due to her period:
“They decided to go ahead and stop me from continuing cutting the weight at 9 a.m.,” Calvillo said. “They didn’t want to make me suffer more so that I was still able to fight. So, that’s basically what happened. Unfortunately, we tried to prepare the best for it, but my body was just not sweating due to having to retain the water because of my period.”
Calvillo is returning from a nine-month suspension due to a failed drug test for marijuana. Hopefully, she will be back in some semblance of health when she makes the walk to the Octagon tonight. Her miss was truly one of the most harrowing weigh-in scenes we’ve seen in the UFC this year.
And that’s saying a lot because there have been many.
She has a legitimate excuse that upon review, is probably more understandable than many others. But it’s still over overarching indictment on the state of weight cutting in mixed martial arts. Calvillo was allowed to compete after nearly falling off the scale and being unable to walk.
It appears a fighter will have to die for something serious to be done abut this epidemic.
