Arman Tsarukyan has pulled back the curtain on Khamzat Chimaev’s brutal weight cut ahead of his UFC 328 middleweight title defense against Sean Strickland.
According to Tsarukyan, Chimaev shed a massive amount of weight over the course of camp to hit the 185-pound middleweight limit. "From Day 1 of his training camp, he cut 40 pounds," Tsarukyan said, adding that fight week alone required another big push.
"[For fight week,] he had to cut 13 pounds. Tuesday, he had to cut, like, 12 or 13 pounds. First nine pounds was easy, and then he felt bad during the night, and then he woke up and said to us, ‘I feel so weak and, like, no energy. I don’t know how I’m going to cut this last four pounds.’ But we just pushed him so hard," Tsarukyan recounted. "He didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to finish the cut, but the team, me and the coaches, we tried to push him to make the weight, and he made weight."
Chimaev ultimately made the championship limit and appeared at the official weigh-ins, with Tsarukyan emphasizing that UFC’s pre-check system cleared him. "He made the weight, because before the official weigh-ins, you go to one more weigh-in, the UFC checks you, your weigh-in, and he was good there, and then they let you go," Tsarukyan said. "If there’s 186 on the automatic scale, you cannot go to the official one."
Tsarukyan described it bluntly: "The weight cut was hard, it was a rough weight cut." Chimaev went on to lose his middleweight title to Strickland via split decision after five rounds at UFC 328.
