Jared Cannonier Walkaround Weight: UFC Star’s Transformation From Heavyweight to Middleweight

Former middleweight title challenger Jared Cannonier is returning this weekend almost a year after his last fight. This will be his first outing in 2024 when he fights Nassourdine Imavov at UFC Louisville. He’s racked up a two-fight winning streak since losing the title fight and plans to get back to the title scene in the stacked middleweight division.

Jared Cannonier has fought in more than one weight class over the course of his career. As we approach Fight Night, let’s take a look at Cannonier’s walkaround weight when he’s out of competition.

How much does Jared Cannonier weigh?

Jared Cannonier has been a heavyweight, a light heavyweight, and currently a middleweight since he started fighting as a professional in 2011. However, he’s only been able to fight for the title once in the UFC, and that was for the 185-pound gold, finding minimal success in the other two divisions. This makes it difficult to estimate how much ‘The Killa Gorilla’s normal weight really is.

But back in 2022, he was revealed to walk around the light heavyweight mark or 10 pounds over that limit. “[I walk around at] About 212 [pounds], 215,” Jared Cannonier told the NY Post. However, the UFC middleweight’s weight doesn’t remain the same. Given that he had competed in heavier divisions, the 40-year-old claimed to weigh far more than 215 pounds on certain occasions, especially when he was not in fight camps.

“I can get up to, like, 230 If I’m not doing anything for weeks on end; I’m just eating like I don’t have a fight coming up (laughs), eating like an undisciplined oaf,” Jared Cannonier added. But did you know he used to weigh more than that before his MMA career took shape? Let’s have a look at that front.

How did Jared Cannonier lose weight?

Jared Cannonier’s weight loss journey is nothing short of a miracle. Most fans may not believe it, but in 2009, the Dallas native weighed around a staggering 300 pounds. At that time, he was living with his pregnant wife, where the cold weather made him eat as much as he could. “When we were in Alaska, we were cold and kind of eating for comfort so that’s when we really got heavy,” Cannonier told ESPN.

‘The Killa Gorilla’ debuted in the UFC as a heavyweight and fought twice in the weight class, winning once and losing once. But then, he would come to conclude that fighting in a lower weight division might be the step he should take and decided to make that transformation. His workout regimen would include waking up at 3.30 AM, half an hour before Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson does, and going for a run. If running isn’t on the books, then he would go to the gym and spend an hour riding the Airdyne bike.

He spent a year following the same routine before moving to Dallas and joining The MMA Lab, located in Phoenix, and later debuting as a light heavyweight and racking up a record of 2 wins and 3 losses. But guess what? Jared Cannonier wasn’t stopping there as he set his sights on getting to the middleweight division. After nine years, since weighing 300 pounds, ‘The Killa Gorilla’ shed more than 100 pounds and weighed in at 185 pounds, for the first time, in 2018. Meanwhile, things can get really difficult when it comes to hitting the official weight mark, and the Dallas native felt that feeling when he missed weight at UFC 244.

‘The Killa Gorilla’ missed out on being the backup at UFC 244

Getting a backup role doesn’t necessarily mean that a fighter will replace another fighter in a scheduled fight, but it’s an opportunity from Dana White, nonetheless, and Jared Cannonier got that opportunity back at UFC 244. He stepped in as the backup fighter for the match between Kelvin Gastelum and former UFC fighter Darren Till. It appeared that the UFC was worried about ‘The Gorilla’ not being able to make it to the fight due to visa issues. However, that did not turn out to be a big problem, as Cannonier didn’t have to fill in for him.

Meanwhile, the most surprising thing for fans was to see Jared Cannonier miss the weight for that fight. And if you want to know what was the margin of the weight miss, it was 0.8 pounds. The former title challenger would open up about that miss and would blame a slight miscalculation as the reason for missing weight.

“Just small miscalculation with the variables… Take all the variables into consideration, it’s nothing. For me, it’s not a bad thing. I can make weight any time whenever I have a fight coming up. Small miscalculation; it won’t happen again,” Cannonier stated during an interview with MMA Junkie. Besides, that’s one bad day at the office for the three-division fighting UFC contender. Because in his own official fights, he’s never missed weight.

What do you think will happen at UFC Louisville? Will Jared Cannonier be able to make weight on the dot? Let us know in the comments down below.