So you want to be a f*cking fighter? That infamous quote from UFC President Dana White still holds weight. For Dan Argueta, it was very prevalent as he was enduring the worst weight cut of his life.
Jackson Wink MMA’s Argueta (6-0) headlines LFA 123 this weekend against fellow undefeated prospect Mairon Santos. However, three months ago, he had the worst weight cut of his life, and no one knew about it outside of his very close circle.
On morning of weigh-ins for LFA 116, Argueta’s fantastic hair was gone. He shaved his head, something he did not want to do but was forced to because he had become ill as his weight cut went sideways.
“I f*cked up,” Argueta told Cageside Press in an exclusive interview ahead of his return this Friday. “Do you want the long answer or the answer I’ve been telling everyone?”
Of course, we wanted the long answer. And we got it. Buckle up.
“My weight cut went good. We were on track. I went to bed the night before with three and a half pounds, four pounds to lose after replenishing and eating after the first round of weight cuts,” recalled Arguelta. “And, yeah, we ran into a lot of issues. I caught a bit of a cold the night before weigh-ins. I purposely got to Vail, Colorado, two days before weigh-ins; I was running up in the mountains in Vail. I spent weeks in Albuquerque, you know, almost a month in Albuquerque, getting my lungs ready to go. Knowing that Vail was a little higher up, we got there early before LFA checked in, and I got sick. It happens; Like I said, I’m giving you the answer. The real answer.”
“So yeah, I got a little sick. The night before weigh-ins, I felt pretty good; I got to eat a little bit—basically, a handful of avocado, blueberries, and yogurt. I went to bed just with the head cold and woke up the next day- well, I didn’t wake up, I didn’t really sleep. I was throwing up all night, dry heaving, throwing up stomach acid all night long. It got to the point where I couldn’t even roll over.” The sickness didn’t stop there. “It was the middle of the night, and I said, f*ck it, and just started throwing up next to my pillow, just spitting up stomach acid next to my pillow.”
“It felt like I got stabbed in the throat. I was one phone call away from pulling out of that fight before I even started my weight cut because I told my coach if I get punched in the chest, I don’t know if I’ll lose, but I’m definitely going to cry on TV. It was that bad,” Argueta continued. “I started up my portable sauna while my coaches were still sleeping and started to jump rope. I jumped in there after a jumping rope for like 20 minutes, and it took me about 53 minutes to break one bead of sweat. I woke up at 139.2, so I only drifted like .6 point or .8. I said that the sauna would mess me up, so we walked to the bathtub. I have my Apple Watch on to track everything, like my heart rate. Walking from the corner of the bedroom to the bathroom, my heart rate spiked to about 192, so we knew I was sick. Something was up.”
“My coaches were like, ‘Are you good? Are you sure?’ I’m was like, ‘shut up. we’re doing this’ and I got in the tub.”
“I started fu*king throwing up on myself, and it’s just stomach acid. It is just green; it’s yellow spit. I’m throwing up, and it’s hurting. I may have been crying. I don’t even remember it, to be honest. I did like thirty-five minutes in a hot tub, and my head wasn’t sweating. Nothing was happening; I got back in the sauna for another 30 minutes and finally broke like three or four beads of sweat. And I’m like, okay, get me wrapped up. Get me mummy wrapped. I started throwing up again.”
“I threw up probably about 40 or 50 times that morning.”
“I’m wrapped up tight throwing up, and they get Cub Swanson on the phone, and he saw how f*cked up I was and said, ‘Hey, we got to cut it. Something got botched.'”
And like that, Argueta shaved his head. This was the first time he ever botched a weight cut in his life.
“It was bad. I’ve been cutting weight since I was 10, 11 years old. That’s the first time that I knew, in a few more minutes, I was going to go to the hospital. Three more minutes, I was going to go to the hospital, I knew it. Every time I threw up, I would cramp. Everything was cramping up. I felt my kidneys. It was bad, man,” Argueta said.
Argueta says the botched weight cut happened weeks before that dreaded morning; even with him getting sick as a built-in excuse, he refused to pass the buck.
“A lot of guys would have been like, ‘Oh, I messed up my cut; it happened this morning or last night.’ Nah, f*ck that. It happened in the off-season, and it happened weeks before it happened, where I could have ran late at night, but I would rather go to bed. It happened when I could have woken up earlier. But instead, I decided to fucking eat some eggs and go to training instead of going running in the morning. That’s why I said it’s not an excuse.”
Dan Argueta fights Mairon Santos this Friday at LFA 123, streamed exclusively on UFC Fight Pass. Watch the rest of Argueta’s interview where he talks about his match-up with Santos, his time on TUF, his 2022, and much more.
