Weidman and Poirier on the Fighters Who Scared Them at First Sight

Chris Weidman fought 24 times in the UFC and walked to the cage against the best middleweights of his era. He'll tell you there was only one guy who made him blink first — and it wasn't a champion. It was Yoel Romero at UFC 205, the man who went on to knock Weidman out in the third round.

The topic came up on an episode of Deep Waters, the podcast Weidman co-hosts alongside Din Thomas, Jorge Masvidal and Dustin Poirier. The conversation was about weight cutting, and Thomas floated a theory most fans overlook: the bigger a fighter looks, the more punishing the cut, and the more depleted he might actually be when the horn sounds. His advice? Don't fear the size. Drag that guy into deep water and make him pay for it.

The One Who Made Weidman Flinch

Weidman agreed with the premise but added a warning. The scale lies. A fighter can look unremarkable at weigh-ins and turn into something else entirely the next night once the water comes back. Weidman, now 16-8 (6 KO, 4 SUB), said he usually looked across the cage certain he couldn't lose. Against Romero, that confidence cracked. Standing opposite the Cuban, he admitted the only thing going through his head was a single expletive.

Poirier had a near-identical story, except his subject was a reigning champion. The Diamond challenged Islam Makhachev for the lightweight belt at UFC 302 and pushed him to a fifth-round submission before the choke finally landed. The detail that stuck with him came before the fight even started.

At the weigh-in, Poirier said, Makhachev looked shattered — so drained from the cut to 155 that his team was physically helping him walk. Then came fight night. The lights hit him, the veins popped in his shoulders, and Poirier said he wondered aloud where this new version had come from.

The punchline writes itself. Makhachev no longer bothers with that brutal lightweight cut — he's the UFC's welterweight champion now, carrying the extra weight comfortably. For Weidman and Poirier, the lesson is the same one fighters keep relearning: the guy on the scale and the guy in the cage are rarely the same person.