Gray Maynard Plans Return To Action In March
Gray Maynard has been around the sport for a long time. He’s been in wars and title fights but never became a UFC champion. He’s mostly fought at lightweight through his career but has given some thought about dropping down to flyweight as of late.
Maynard explained in a recent interview that for the last year and a half, he’s been walking around at his fight weight (155lb) and not 170lb or higher, which is what he used to do.
“The last year-and-a-half my weight’s been pretty low,” he told MMA Fighting. “It’s been easy to make weight. I know there were a lot of rumors throughout my career that it was hard for me to get down. It never really was hard. I just let the rumors go. It was never to the point where I had to diet all camp. It was more that I had to diet and cut down the last two weeks before a fight. It’s always hard to make weight the last day. But it wasn’t an eight-week process.”
Maynard said that he would walk around sometimes as high as 200 lb, which is crazy to think for a guy who cut down to 155lb for most of his career.
“I would walk around at 170, and a lot of times I would get out of camp and just bulk up,” he says. “But, you know, everybody does. I would get up to 180 at times. But it was just I was kind of out of control in how I ate. Obviously, I would probably hit the weights a lot more. You’ve got guys Tyson Griffin, who would get up to 185, 190 even 200. Just because you get up that high, it doesn’t mean that you can’t get back down.”
Maynard (11-5-1 MMA, 9-5-1 UFC) has convinced himself that he is going to go down to featherweight, which is 145 lb, for his next fight and is planning to return to the octagon in March.
“March would be good,” he says. “I definitely want to try and compete at home in Vegas, and I’m just taking it kind of day by day and checking where I’m at. I don’t want to hurry up into it, but I definitely want to get back in there.”
The reason for the move is because he has lost his last four fights, three of them via KO to T.J. Grant, Nate Diaz, and Ross Pearson and then a decision loss to Alexander Yakovlev in April.
As of this writing, there’s no word on who his next opponent will be.
