Former UFC welterweight champion Johny Hendricks appeared recently on The MMA Hour, and discussed his retiring. The toll of cutting repeatedly from 210 or 190 down to 170 eventually damaged his body, and came to a head following a fight vs. Neil Magny at UFC 207 on December 30, 2016.

After the last time I fought 170, my kidneys shut down.,” said Hendricks, as transcribed by Shaun Al-Shatti for MMA Fighting. “I ballooned out, said Hendricks. So, let’s see, I fought on Saturday. On Sunday night I got home, I was 219, and I blew up like a balloon. My doctor was like, ‘Hey, you need to go to the hospital.’ I was like, I know exactly what’s going on, my kidneys shut down. And I guess it went on for about four or five days. On Thursday, they rebooted, and whenever that happened, I went from 219 to 199 in like 24 hours, and I didn’t work out or nothing. That’s when I was like, ‘You know what, I’m going to kill myself.’ And that’s the thing, with IVs, the damage that you do by cutting weight, [the IV] helps you not kill yourself, because like I said, all that stuff that’s important to your body, you can’t get it back in 36 hours. You can’t get it back in 48 hours.

But with an IV, it goes straight into your veins, it goes straight into your muscles, in your organs, and it sends [everything] exactly where it needs to for you to recover the best you can. That’s why in every sport, what do they do? In every sport, if you’re hurting or you’re this or you’re that, they give you IVs. They’re a huge part. I remember back in the day, I liked to take them on Wednesdays. I’d take like a half of a bag on Wednesday, just so that way it’d keep me from getting sick, it helped where I could train harder — so on Wednesday, I would start fading on my training, and then I would take an IV bag in the middle of the day, I could train hard on Wednesday night, Thursday, Friday, and it was like a brand new me.

Prior to selecting USADA to independently conduct random, comprehensive, out of competition performance-enhancing drug testing late in 2015, endricks went 12-3, capped by winning the welterweight belt. Post USADA, ‘Big Rigg’ went 1-5. Prior to USADA, Hendricks came close, but never missed weight. After USADA he once missed weight in three of four fights. Hendricks explained that the difference was IVs, which are prohibited by USADA as they can be used to mask PEDs.

I think USADA’s a great thing for the athletes, because it’s making people be clean, right? I took 26 tests, never failed one of them,” said Hendricks. “And that was in two years; I took 26 tests, never failed one of them. But what hurts the MMA aspect is that you can’t [use] IV bags. So, I’m a bigger welterweight, I walk around at 210. I’ve done that since I was 19 years old, walk around at 210, and the IV always brought me back. It helped me get back to life, it helped me get to where I didn’t feel like I cut weight. And once USADA came into play, I had to start walking around like 190 at best, and as you can tell, I do carry a lot of weight … and that’s sort of one reason why it just made it that much harder to make weight at 170.

I’m just not in the sport to just be in a sport. Does that make sense? I can do other things. If I’m going to do it, I want to be the best, and I know welterweight is my best. That’s where I should be. Now, like I’d said, I loved the fact of USADA and I loved that you do the random drug testing. I just wish that, they have a lot of people that show up at these meets — you want to do an IV, have them test you every day. I’m perfectly fine with that. You show up Monday, you get tested. Tuesday, you get tested. Wednesday, you get tested. Thursday, if you have any pee left, you can get tested on Thursday. They’re there testing the IV bags, they’re doing everything like that, and I think you can bring back IVs, because I think there’s a lot of people that really used the IVs to help them fight better. Once you took that away, you started to see some of these guys, they either had to move up or they stayed at their normal weight and they didn’t perform like they used to.

I tell everybody, go run 26 miles, take an IV. The next day you’re going to be sore, but guess what? You feel like you can run again. It’s an amazing thing. All the vitamins, all the minerals that you’re pulling from your body, irons and stuff like that your body really needs to compete at a high level, definitely whenever you’re fighting in the UFC, you need those back in your muscles. A perfect example: Without them, I think I was fighting at maybe 50 percent. With them, I was fighting right around 90 percent, because my body was able to recover after that hard weight cut.

An alternative to IVs, and a process that does not potentially kill you, is weight management – not allowing your weught to ballon up to 210 and then cutting multiple times per year to 171 or 170

Hendricks said he considered moving to Bellator, but now is having bareknuckle boxing match vs. Brennan Ward at World Bare Knuckle Fighting Federation 1 on November 9. He says it will answer some questions he has about how good his striking is.