YORBA LINDA, California—Although TJ Dillashaw has a wife and a young son in a beautiful home in Orange County, he spends much of his professional life several miles away at his other home.
The UFC bantamweight champion trains in the garage of Sam Calavitta, a triathlete math professor and performance specialist who coaches Dillashaw, Bellator’s Aaron Pico and other elite athletes. Dillashaw also spends countless hours at the nearby kitchen table with Calavitta’s nine children, eating daily meals prepared by Calavitta’s wife and daughters.
Dillashaw’s entire life revolves around his two homes, and he believes his two families provide him with the strength and grounding to do something nobody in UFC history has accomplished.
The 135-pound champion is going against conventional wisdom by cutting 10 pounds of weight to fight flyweight champ Henry Cejudo on Saturday night in Brooklyn.
Elite mixed martial artists over 30 are supposed to get bigger, not smaller. All three UFC fighters who have ever won simultaneous belts in two weight classes—Conor McGregor, Daniel Cormier and Amanda Nunes—did it by going up in weight, not down.
Dillashaw and Calavitta were confident he could do it with a scientific, meticulously measured plan that takes the nearly 33-year-old Dillashaw down to a weight at which the former Cal State Fullerton wrestler hadn’t competed since he was a teenager.
“I always knew I could make the weight, but I’m surprised at how good I feel trying to get down there,” Dillashaw said. “It’s because of how professional I took it. My diet has been strict. My workout routine has been strict. I’m lean, and everyone thinks I’m lying, but I’m stronger now than I was last camp.”
Instead of relying on the mix of crash dieting, sauna sweats and dehydration that has been the time-tested formula for fighters determined to compete at the smallest possible weight, Calavitta and Dillashaw created a three-month regimen of precise eating, working out and constant monitoring of every factor in between. Every calorie counts in the home-cooked meals eaten by Dillashaw at Calavitta’s table, but the plan is much more than a diet.
“We’re not really presenting him something that is so much discipline or deprivation as it is lifestyle,” said Calavitta, an award-winning calculus teacher and former aerospace engineer who has competed in multiple triathlons. “It’s to make your life better now as well as after fighting, so you can spend many, many years with your wife and your kids with a healthy and truthful life without many of the negative effects [of fighting].”
Calavitta planned out every step in the process even before Dillashaw (16-3) agreed to the fight against Cejudo (13-2).
Dillashaw has talked about going down to 125 pounds for several years, particularly for a big-money fight against long-reigning champ Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson. Right after Cejudo upset Johnson last August on the same Los Angeles card on which Dillashaw trounced Cody Garbrandt, the UFC approached Dillashaw with a chance at the flyweight belt.
Dillashaw asked Calavitta if he could do it. Calavitta did some calculations on the way home from Staples Center and then spoke to Dillashaw.
“Well, I’ve followed the numbers here, and I believe the numbers allow me to bring you down safely without missing a single meal, without missing a single drink,” Calavitta said.
Calavitta projected his plan over 16 weeks, and Dillashaw began working before the holidays. But by the time the bout was finalized, they only had 12 weeks to get down to 125 pounds—and then 11 weeks when the UFC asked Dillashaw to move up the fight from January 26 in Anaheim to January 19 in Brooklyn.
Image credits: AP