The UFC was forced to cut its official broadcast on Friday after bantamweight Cameron Smotherman collapsed after making weight for his upcoming UFC 324 bout against Ricky Turcios.
Smotherman is set to fight against Turcios on the undercard of Paddy Pimblett's title fight against Justin Gaethje at UFC 324, which will be held inside the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
However, on Friday afternoon there was a concerning incident ahead of the bout.
Smotherman had walked away from the scale after clocking in at 135.5 lbs, but moments later, the 28-year-old lost consciousness and faceplanted onto the stage floor.
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He was down for several minutes, according to a report from MMA Junkie, which suggests the American appeared to faint again as he was tended to by commission, promotion, and medical workers.
Smotherman was eventually carried off stage by staff.
As per MMA Mania, Smotherman has since been rushed to hospital.
Speaking previously about the fight, Smotherman had said: "In the fights that I’ve lost, it’s not that I was getting my ass whooped from pillar to post from bell to bell or anything like that. Like the worst thing that happened to me is just that I’m getting stalled out. The way to beat me is to not fight me. And so I’m just kind of going back and focusing on those little details."
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Reacting to the incident, ex-fighters Daniel Cormier and Chris Weidman were left shocked while speaking on the live UFC broadcast.
Cormier said: "I have never seen that. Oh my god." Weidman then added: "This is going to be a problem with the commission."
Cormier continued: "There are certain reasons why this happens. When you cut weight, even my kids when they're cutting weight for wrestling, when you take all the heat off, you cannot stand fast.
"You cannot get up from that exhausted state and move too fast. Him, walking to the scale, getting on the scale and trying to walk off could be your brain just going all foggy. You lose where you are. I've had times where you stand up and it's almost like you've got knocked out because you're so light-headed."
Weidman then said: "I also want to say to the people, every single time I've cut weight, I'm holding on to people because every 5 or so seconds, I'm blacking out or whatever and then I'm good. I will say, I don't know just because it looked awful, I don't know how severe it really is."
Finally, Cormier concluded: "It's scary to see. I'm telling you, if you get up too fast. He's cut a ton of weight, honestly, in the weight cutting process, you lose weight and diet down to a weight that is safe then you just suck out all of the water for the shortest period of time you can. A lot of people are doing this in the morning, we don't know if he didn't do a lot of his weight cut this morning."
Topics: UFC
Jack Kenmare