Former UFC lightweight champion Anthony Pettis appeared recently on UFC Tonight, ahead of his fight with Charles Oliveira at UFC on FOX 21 on Saturday. You have to go to Thesaurus.com to find words that might describe how Pettis looks as he tries to make 146 on Friday morning for his featherweight debut. Aranorexic, emaciated, cadaverous, haggard, peaked, pinched,sepulchral, skeletal, and wasted all are contenders.
Forensic artists create a face based on the shape of a person’s skull. You can see what Pettis’s skull looks like based on his face right now.
He does not look good.
The first MMA fighter to make the cover of Wheaties:
Now:
Mixed martial arts has a central problem at present with a culture of extreme weight cutting. It not just that cutting brutally hard makes you look bad, it is bad for the kidney, bad for the brain if you don’t rehydrate properly.
It’s bad.
Still, it was an obvious choice for Pettis. He was never a large lightweight, and is currently on a three fight losing streak, albeit to a murder’s row of Rafael dos Anjos, Eddie Alvarez, and Edson Barboza. At 29, he is not getting faster. And he already has one of the greatest camps in the sport with Duke Roufus’s Roufusport, where he has been since he was 18.
From that perspective, a drop to 145 makes sense.
Pettis spoke with hosts Daniel Cormier and Kenny Florian about Saturday’s fight.
“The weight cut was actually a big process,” began Pettis. “I had to actually get myself up and prepare for it, so I feel nervous, anxious. Feels good to be back – nervous about the whole process again.”
“I’m in this organization to be a champion. I feel like at 55, I lost to Eddie, he’s the champ, RDA, he’s the champ, Edson Barboza probably gets a title shot. I go down to 145, I’ve got a whole new path, a whole new division of guys I can potentially get matched up with.
“I can make the weight. It only made sense to get down there and try it out. A two division champ – sounds good to me.”
Pettis might also consider going up, to welterweight. He defeated Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, who looks awesome at 170. And Anthony Johnson, who used to fight at 170, is now the scariest man at 205.
