UFC’s Burt Watson monitors fighter weights from ‘good’ to ‘fat body’

Site coordinator Burt Watson is one of the hardest working members of the UFC staff when it comes to fight week.

One of Watson’s most prominent jobs is to help ensure every fighter scheduled to compete on a given card is on weight and ready to go.

Sometimes that job goes without a single mishap, other times it can be overwhelming and frantic.

But even after years and countless shows of the same process, Watson says he has to be as diligent as ever to make sure every aspect of a fighter’s weight cut is on track.

“You hear guys, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it, I’ll get there, I’ll be there,’” Watson told MMAjunkie Radio. “Then when they get to the weigh-in, they get to the scale and it doesn’t say what they think it should say. They look at me or look at me and look at the commission and blame the scale.

“I hear that all the time. ‘Oh, I’ll be good.’ No, it’s good when it’s done and they say it’s good.”

Watson’s presence behind-the-scenes at nearly every UFC operation is commonplace, and by now his routine when it comes to dealing with fighters is more or less nailed down.

One way Watson manages to keep track of everything going on is by writing notes on the trusty piece of white paper he constantly carries in his hand.

On that paper, Watson has a unique system to maintain order, and that’s to write a quick, and perhaps unflattering, note about the fighter’s physique.

“This paper, it has two words on it,” Watson said. “‘Good’ or ‘Fat body.’ Plain and simple. I check their weight and the ones that I see and feel are good, that I feel are going to make it and won’t have a tough cut during the week, I put a ‘G’ beside them. The one that’s I see that might be a little heavy with flight time and water weight and all that other stuff get an ‘FB.’”

Watson admits every event has a mix of “G” and “FB” fighters, and surely enough, he expects he’ll have a few situations to deal with this week as UFC 170 goes down from Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Events Center on Saturday.

UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey puts her title on the line for the third time against Sara McMann in the main event. The show airs on pay-per-view with preliminary-card action airing on FOX Sports 1 and streaming on UFC Fight Pass.

For the latest on UFC 170, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.
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