Kai Kara-France expects Cody Garbrandt’s first cut down to flyweight to take a toll on his body.
Kara-France (22-9 MMA, 5-2 UFC) will welcome Garbrandt (12-4 MMA, 7-4 UFC) to the 125-pound weight class at UFC 269 on Dec. 11 in Las Vegas. Considering it will be the former bantamweight champion’s first time making the cut down, Kara-France thinks it’ll likely have an impact on his performance.
Garbrandt has been working with nutritionist Dr. Matteo Capodaglio to drop the additional 10 pounds safely, but Kara-France thinks a lot of the advantages Garbrandt enjoyed at 135 pounds will be gone once he depletes his body.
“This is the biggest stage in the world and you don’t want to be cutting weight for the first time in front of all these people on the biggest pay-per-view with me standing in front of you,” Kara-France told MMA Junkie Radio. “You don’t know how your body is gonna react. Being a bantamweight earlier in my career, when I did make the cut down to flyweight, it took a few fights to kinda see the success and just figuring out how your body is gonna react. Over time that just comes with experience. This isn’t my first time cutting to flyweight in the UFC. This will be my eighth appearance now so there’s nothing new to me.
“For Cody, he’s trying to reinvent himself at this new weight class and there’s a lot of questions to be answered. How is he gonna recover from the weight cut? How is his chin going to hold up? How’s his cardio gonna weigh up? And also, being in this new weight class, he was fast at bantamweight. Probably one of the fastest, but everyone is fast at this weight class and it’s all about scrambles, it’s all about transitions and for me. tTis is what we do. That is how we train in these camps, it’s just about angles, speed, footwork and then finding the holes and putting them away.”
With both men known for their knockout power, Kara-France doesn’t see how his fight with Garbrandt doesn’t deliver. Three of Garbrandt’s past four losses have come by way of knockout, and the 28-year-old Kiwi aims to bring the fight right to him.
“It’s gonna be action-packed right from the get-go,” Kara-France said. “We’re gonna stand in the middle, we’re gonna be trading punches and strikes and he’s gonna feel the weight cut. He’s definitely gonna be pushed and eventually I’ll put him away so I can see myself being overwhelming and once he realizes the flyweights have power and it was a bad matchup to come down for the first time against me, he’ll realize that it was a bad move. If you look at T.J. Dillashaw as a blueprint of how to cut down to flyweight, it’s never ended well so I can’t wait and just expect fireworks.”