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Paul Craig is making his middleweight debut tomorrow at UFC London: Aspinall vs Tybura after a full decade of fighting at light heavyweight.
Paul Craig moving to UFC middleweight division following losses
The 35-year-old fighter is 8-6-1 as a light heavyweight (205 pounds) in the UFC where he’s been fighting since 2015. Following back-to-back losses to Johnny Walker and Volkan Oezdemir, he elected to cut to 185 pounds and fight in the middleweight division. He is the 9th ranked fighter in the UFC LHW division.
The 6 foot, 4 inch tall “Bearjew” showed all the ravages of a serious weight cut at today’s UFC London weigh-ins.
Paul Craig described ‘horrible’ UFC London weight cut
Craig talked about the brutal weight cut on his Leathered podcast in May (transcription via MMA News):
“It’s horrible, man… I would normally diet and we’d cut, I’m talking like, a couple of kilograms, two at the absolute max. Whereas this was eight kilograms of water weight,” Craig said.
“Middleweight, we were big. We were f*cking huge… (On Thursday) I done my 30-40 minute run, spent 20 minutes in the sauna, and then done a 40-minute wrap… Went to bed, slept relatively alright… Woke up about half five… fired on some sweet sweat, jumped in the bath for 20 minutes… Land on the wrap, 20 minutes in there.
“Then the nutritionist is like, ‘Nah Paul, that’s it, we’ve made it… That’s us, we’ve made the weight.’ I’m like, ‘Nah, we’ve still got an extra 0.4 to go.’ I wanted to make sure we could do it (championship weight)… What’s the point of going to the strippers and not getting a lap dance? I need to know I could do it,” Craig continued. “Jumped back in the bath, 20 minute in the bath, and we were bang on the money… Thumbs up.”
Craig asked agent where does UFC matchmaker want me?
Craig also detailed a conversation with his agent in which he revealed the decision was not entirely his own.
“I’ve been speaking to my agent last night, and the questions they (UFC) asked were, ‘What do you wanna do? You wanna fight at light heavyweight or middleweight?’ I said, ‘Tell me what you want.’ Where does Mick Maynard, the matchmaker, where does he want me. I’m a company guy. Tell me who to fight and I’ll fight him.”
Craig vs Muniz at UFC London potential ‘high level grappling match’
UFC.com’s official preview of the fight does its best to curse everyone with a sloppy kickboxing match since both fighters are skilled grapplers.
“Ideally, this turns out to be a high-level grappling match that just so happens to take place inside the Octagon, as Craig and Muniz are masters of their craft and their pairing has the potential to be exhilarating. Do what you’ve got to do in order to appease the fight gods so they may deliver us the grappling battle this deserves to be.”
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