Aspen Ladd details dangerous weight cut
Aspen Ladd: “I was crying. This was a terrible morning – two baths, and then an hour and 20 minutes in the sauna to get to that point.”
UFC women’s bantamweight Aspen Ladd’s last fight fell apart when she missed weight, and Leslie Smith declined to take the fight. At UFC 229 she fights Tonya Evinger and made weight successfully. However, during an interview with John Morgan for MMAjunkie, she detailed a brutal cut.
Ladd has to remove all clothes to make weight, and after putting her branded apparel back on, appeared too weak to even step back up onto the scale.
After some concerns about whether she'd make weight, @AspenLaddMMA was able to hit the mark at 134.5 – it was kinda scary, though. #UFC229 https://t.co/Mq3XYiUQkf pic.twitter.com/HLZ7eEx73S
— MMA Junkie (@MMAJunkie) October 5, 2018
I dieted down forever, drank two gallons [of water with salt] leading up to the [cut], said Ladd.
But the fighter woke up a few pounds heavy, and had to alternate hot baths and the sauna.
I was crying, she said. This was a terrible morning – two baths, and then an hour and 20 minutes in the sauna to get to that point. Yeah, I was just about in tears.
Honestly, it got to the point where I was like, ‘Screw it. If I pass out, put me back in.’ I wasn’t going to miss. I was at the point, yeah, where I was like, ‘Yeah, just drag my body back in.’
But Ladd made the bantamweight limit of 136.
It already feels better, but it takes a while for your body to acclimate – chills, all kinds of crap, Ladd said. But by, like, this evening, I’ll be feeling almost normal, and by the time I wake up tomorrow, I’ll be feeling good.
The longer I have, the better I’m going to feel. By tomorrow, I’ll be good. It sure as heck wasn’t fun, but no, it just, I need to get better at it. I mean, you can’t really ask for a better result, but I can make it less miserable leading up to it.
Saturday Ladd has the fight of her life, the most intense physical exertion imaginable. And today she didn’t have the energy so step up 8″ onto a scale. Weight cutting is and remains a hugely irrational practice, and will remain so until there is a death of an elite MMA fighter, or all the leading commissions adopt CSAC’s 10 Point Plan to address the issue.
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