Julian Marquez is just a day away from his UFC debut, and he has changed up his lifestyle ahead of it.
The middleweight defeated Phil Hawes with one of the most vicious knockouts of 2017 — a head kick that slept the Jackson-Wink MMA fighter — at a Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series event this past summer. UFC president Dana White was impressed enough with Marquez to give him a shot in the Octagon.
Though Marquez passed the in-cage test on the Contender Series with flying colors, his weight cut leading up that fight wasn’t so easy.
Prior to the Hawes fight, Marquez had competed twice in a row in the light heavyweight division — 20 pounds heavier than middleweight. So when he cut down to 185 pounds for the first time since May 2016 — more than a year later — it was quite the challenge.
And noisy basketball players in Las Vegas certainly didn’t help.
“I only had six weeks to get down. I was up at 230 (pounds),” Marquez told BloodyElbow.com on Monday. “I contacted Tyler Minton — he’s my nutritionist — and he helped get everything down to a tee. He knows everything, he knows my body, I’ve worked with him for years.
“Essentially, that weight cut was bad, because I didn’t sleep for 24 hours. I was up the whole entire time. We were up at The Palms, and there’s a basketball court in there. People were playing basketball, and I was waking up, trying to sleep. People were making loud noises there. When you’re cutting and your body is down at a weight it hasn’t been at for a really, really long time, it’s hard to rest. I was up the whole time. … When we made it (to 185 pounds), right then and there, I knew I already won, because I made that weight cut.”
With the bad weight cut still in the back of his mind, heading into his promotional debut at UFC on FOX 26 in Winnipeg on Saturday, Marquez continued working with Minton, who works with multiple UFC champions and top contenders, including Daniel Cormier, Max Holloway, and Khabib Nurmagomedov. Marquez also did most of his training camp at the UFC Performance Institute in Las Vegas.
Marquez said training at the new facility “was amazing.” Most importantly, he gained so much information on nutrition from experts who work there, he said, and ate meals prepared specifically for him and his needs.
“I’d be able to talk to Clint and Andy — they’re both nutritionists there. So I’d be able to pick their brains and understand a little bit more about the nutrition side — the macros and micros. We’ve had some interesting conversations so I can understand a little bit more about my body,” Marquez said. “You have Bo Sandoval and Kyle Lamar — they’re the strength-and-conditioning coaches there. They’ve been working with me three times a week for the past 13 weeks to help build up my stamina, strength, and speed. And I’ve seen drastic improvements since I first went there.
“The best part of the PI was working with all these people, becoming friends with all these people — they’re kind of like an extended family. I could send them a text message, like, ‘Hey, this is the exact amount of chicken I need, this is the exact amount of avocado, rice, beans, whatever.’ And they would weigh out everything in mind, so when I go there to eat, I would have perfectly proportioned meals. It never was a struggle; they made it super easy. This is honestly why I had the best camp ever. They assisted me the whole way.”
Marquez, who meets short-notice replacement Darren Stewart this weekend, has no plans to revisit the 205-pound division in the future; middleweight will always be his home moving forward.
“I’ll be permanently at 185,” Marquez said. “See, [the Hawes fight] was (on) such short notice, and I didn’t really change my lifestyle to compete. I just was like, ‘Alright, we’re gonna go 185. This is where I want to be.’ Right now, since we found out about this fight and since [the Hawes fight], I’ve been working with Tyler Minton, and we have been doing everything correctly and changing my life for the past 13 weeks. Right now, I am perfect on my weight. I am 15 pounds lighter than I was the day before I weighed in (against Hawes), and it’s four days away. Regardless, I’ve already been through the worst of the worst of cutting. It’s not gonna be that hard.”
Marquez vs. Stewart will take place on the televised portion of the UFC on FOX 26 preliminary card, which starts at 5 PM ET/2 PM PT on FS1.