'Every part of it was miserable': Why is Ilia Topuria done cutting to 145? One retired UFC fighter understands

When UFC star Ilia Topuria first explained that he was vacating his featherweight title, not so much because of pure ambition, but because he simply didn’t want to keep making the 145-pound limit, many fans couldn’t understand it.

To leave behind a UFC title — and the pay-per-view money that comes with it? To hope that he’d be able to win another belt at lightweight, where he challenges former champion Charles Oliveira for the vacant 155-pound title at UFC 317 on Saturday? It seemed like such a gamble. And all so he could weigh 10 extra pounds.

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But one person who immediately understood is retired UFC fighter Kenny Florian. He knew better than most what Topuria had been going through, because he went through it himself.

“I relate to what he’s saying, definitely,” Florian told Uncrowned. “And let me tell you, when I did it, it was miserable. Every part of it was miserable.”

For most of his UFC career, Florian fought at lightweight. It felt like the natural weight class for his body, since he typically walked around somewhere in the 180-pound range. That left him with 25 pounds to lose ahead of weigh-in day, which, for the already extreme world of professional fighting, was considered manageable.

Then, late in his career, Florian decided to make a change. After having his hopes for a lightweight title dashed, Florian moved down a weight class, hoping for a fresh start in the featherweight division.

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“I was purely thinking: Pay-per-view numbers,” Florian said, referring to the cut of pay-per-view revenues that UFC champions typically receive. “If I can get pay-per-view numbers, I can suffer through it. I definitely didn’t think I was going to stay [at featherweight] for years. But I thought maybe I could win the belt, be lucky enough to defend it once or twice, and call it a career.”

But making 145 pounds required a cut almost identical to the one Topuria has been making. Dropping 35 pounds — about 20% of his body weight — entirely on fight week was not a realistic or wise option. Instead, Florian had to completely rework his diet and training plan weeks out from the fight.

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“It was a beast of a weight cut,” Florian said. “Everything was around making weight and eating a specific way, when a training camp really should revolve around the preparation for your opponent. To me, everything else was secondary to just making sure I'm able to make that weight, and that's not a great headspace to be. I was never really in that headspace before. It was always about proper preparation, strategy, technique, all that stuff. Then everything was just around eating no more than 1,500 calories a day, training three times a day, six days a week. So it was awful. There’s weight cuts, and then there's lifestyle changes. This was a significant lifestyle change. It’s not like I wasn’t eating clean before and training year-round. I was. But this was a caloric restriction that was not healthy.”

Florian’s featherweight debut came against Diego Nunes at UFC 131. Those of us in attendance saw Florian get physically carried out of the host hotel, wrapped in sweats with a towel tucked into the hood, and placed into a van headed to the pre-fight weigh-in. He hit the mark on the scale, then won the fight via unanimous decision the next night. But it all came at a cost.

“It was a whole different type of stress,” Florian said. “I was dragging ass going from [training] session to [training] session, as opposed to having full energy in those sessions. And that leads to mental stress, physical stress, spiritual stress. Just week after week after week where you can easily start to kind of doubt yourself. Like, how am I going to be on fight night? And that's the other thing, it was always the stress of not knowing how your body is going to perform after all that.”

There were also long-term physical costs. Though Florian only fought twice at featherweight — once against Nunes, then an unsuccessful title shot against then-champion Jose Aldo — he believes the lifestyle changes required to make the drop in weight had lasting effects.

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“I’m on thyroid medication right now because of those cuts to 145 [pounds],” Florian said. “It’s not a major deal, but I probably wouldn’t be on thyroid medication if I didn’t have to do those cuts. And who knows what else it can do to you. Dehydrating and depleting your body and your brain is one thing, but doing it and then getting hit in the head after is quite another.”

After announcing his decision to go up in weight, Topuria referenced many of these same concerns. He’s also opened up in interviews about the diminished quality of life that comes with keeping his body so close to its lowest possible threshold.

“I think not a lot of people understand how hard is the weight cut,” Topuria told Uncrowned’s Ariel Helwani on Monday. “When you get tired of the weight cut, there’s no name in the world that motivates you to fight. There’s no money in the world. You just want to take care of your health. It’s the reason why I switched the weight class.”

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Topuria said that, prior to vacating the title, he met with UFC executives and explained his decision to them. It wasn’t that he felt he needed a title in a second UFC division, he said. It was only about health and longevity, as well as his mental well-being.

“It makes me at some point hate the sport,” Topuria said. “When you cut the weight, you’re like, 'This is the last time I’m fighting. This is the last time I’m cutting the weight.' And in reality, I love the sport. I love my job. I love what I’m doing. So I had to make some changes.”

How those changes will impact his performance remain to be seen. Topuria was unstoppable at featherweight, dethroning two longtime former champions in one calendar year, with both wins coming by knockout, becoming Uncrowned's 2024 Fighter of the Year in the process. He’s never lost as a professional in that division. But at lightweight he faces larger opponents like Oliveira, and it’s not yet clear how his size and power and range as a striker will be impacted by the move.

What is already clear, however, is that the move has made him happier and healthier headed into fight week.

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“Dramatically different,” Topuria said of his experience so far. “Right now I feel good, I feel happy. I’m able to keep eating, keep drinking. I didn’t have to kill myself to get to this point.”

As for Florian, he said he understands entirely what Topuria went through and why he felt he needed to make the change. And while he said he wouldn’t be surprised if the former featherweight champ struggles early on in Saturday’s main event to adjust to the size and reach of Oliveira, he still expects Topuria to find success in his new weight class.

“It's going to be interesting, just because Ilia is going against a pretty large lightweight — and former featherweight — in Charles Oliveira,” Florian said. “But I've said this many times, that I think that [Topuria] is probably the most skilled mixed martial arts on the planet right now.

"He definitely wouldn’t be one of the largest lightweight champs we’ve ever seen. But I think he could be well-poised to hold onto that lightweight belt for a long time.”