Welterweight Anthony Johnson, who weighed in 6 pounds over the 170 pound division limit on Friday for tonight’s UFC 104 event, talks to Heavy.com about missing weight and a future move up to middleweight:

Heavy.com: Was this the first time you tried to cut from 220?

Anthony Johnson: Yeah, I never get that high. That’s the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life. But I got an injury when I was getting ready for Matt Brown, I hurt my knee again. When you get injured, you don’t do much. You sit around and eat and get fat. That’s exactly what I did.

Heavy.com: What weight do you usually start at?

Anthony Johnson: Usually I start at 210. That ten pound difference made a big impact. You know what I mean? It kicked my butt, but I was prepared for it. I was prepared to just grind it out and get down to 171. And I was in the sauna for an hour and I lost three or four pounds right off the bat. I knew it was coming off. That’s why I said that if I had another hour or two, I would have been able to make it. I got out of the sauna, and I think I was out too long because my sweating stopped, and when I got back in the sauna I couldn’t get anything else off. That’s what broke me.

Heavy.com: What were you at the day before the weigh-ins?

Anthony Johnson: Well, I was working with this trainer, a friend of my agent. He wanted me to try barely eating anything but getting a lot of fluids in me. So we did that, and I was 192 on Monday and I should have been less than 185 on Wednesday and I wouldn’t need to make the hard cut on Friday. The trainer told me, “drink a lot of water and don’t eat too much”. So I did that, and then on Thursday I did a three hour workout and dropped from 198 to 183. I was 192 and I drank all of this water that he wanted me to drink and got back up to 198. Doing his thing, it was cool but I think the process got started too late. If I’d done things the way I always did, I would have been fine, but trying this new method, this new way of doing things, really jacked my body up.

Heavy.com: Have you given any thought to jumping up to middleweight?

Anthony Johnson: I will eventually. Right now, I like 170. There’s nothing you can really do about it except try to cut. You know, I haven’t missed weight in two years. I always try my best, and when I don’t succeed, it irritates me and I get bummed out. It pisses me off, it pisses off the UFC and it pisses off my fans. It makes everybody mad, you know?

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