Fighting at high altitude? It's more of a problem than you think, with fewer feasible solutions

The moment he saw the blood trickling from a cut near Cain Velasquez’s eye late in the first round of the UFC 188 main event in Mexico City, at least one fellow fighter knew the recently deposed UFC heavyweight champion was in trouble.

In his own way, Ben Rothwell had been there before. At another high-elevation event, UFC 135 in Denver some four years earlier, Rothwell clearly won the first round of his heavyweight bout against Mark Hunt.

But late in the round, a Hunt elbow opened a cut above Rothwell’s right eye, and Rothwell didn’t feel like his body reacted to that the same way it had in lower altitudes, he said.

“I felt immediately different going into the second round,” Rothwell said. “Just completely different. I can’t overstate it. I felt good in the first round, dominated that round, got cut, then stood up (to start the second) and it felt like all my oxygen had been taken from me. I stood up and, basically, in my head I said a little prayer, because I couldn’t believe how bad I felt just standing up to start that round.”

That’s why, Rothwell said, when he saw Velasquez suffer a similar cut at altitude against new UFC heavyweight champion Fabricio Werdum, “I knew right away what he was going through.”

Velasquez wasn’t the only one who seemed to struggle with the altitude in Mexico City, which sits roughly 2,000 feet higher than Denver. According to UFC President Dana White, several fighters became physically ill after their fights at UFC 188, including Yair Rodriguez, who threw up during his post-fight interview following a unanimous decision win over Charles Rosa.

Women’s strawweight Tecia Torres said she arrived in Mexico City two weeks before her bout with Angela Hill, and thought her body was adjusting to the altitude as she hiked in the mountains and visited the pyramids.

“But as soon as I started getting ready behind the scenes, hitting mitts in the locker room, I was feeling it,” Torres said. “My stomach hurt. I wasn’t the normal me, wasn’t on my toes like I usually am. Going into the second round, it was hard just to bring my hands up to my face. I felt like my hands were really heavy.”

As a result, Torres said, she had to rely on her superior wrestling to get the win, since she didn’t feel like she had the necessary pop to duke it out on the feet. That made for a boring fight, and one that probably didn’t endear her to fans, “but it was what I had to do to get the win there,” Torres said.

If she had it to do over again, Torres would have arrived at altitude well over two weeks before the fight. That was the approach Werdum took, setting up his camp on the outskirts of Mexico City more than a month before his bout with Velasquez to help acclimatize himself to the unique environment.

And yet, as several fighters and coaches told MMAjunkie, that’s not always a practical solution for every fighter at every pay grade. In fact, there are a host of factors that fighters have to take into account when agreeing to high-altitude MMA events, making it a tricky issue for the people whose livelihoods depend on their performances – even in difficult environments like the one in Mexico City.

Alliance MMA coach Eric Del Fierro knew just how tough it would be when two of his fighters, Johnny Case and Kelvin Gastelum, were booked on the UFC 188 card. He’d helped arrange some small fight events in Mexico City, he said, and visited family there from time to time, so he knew that going from the team’s sea-level gym in San Diego to nearly 8,000 feet up just a few days before the fight could be trouble.

“We kind of had an advantage because we’ve fought there before,” said Del Fierro, who helped Gastelum prepare for a fight at the UFC’s first Mexico City event last November. “And it’s not just the elevation. It’s the air quality, a bunch of different things. I knew how it could affect you. If you aren’t ready for it, it’s really rough.”

That’s why his fighters began using altitude tents 12 weeks before the fight, Del Fierro said. And according to Case, who, like Gastelum, was victorious at UFC 188, sleeping in that tent helped him feel like he was “already pretty acclimated when he got” to Mexico City.

At the same time, even for the fighters who feel like they’ve done enough to prepare for the effects of the altitude, Del Fierro admitted, “there’s a psychological factor as well.”

“Going out there, whether you’re prepared for it or not,” Del Fierro said, “you could really see different fighters trying to pace themselves.”

According to John Crouch, head coach at The MMA Lab in Glendale, Ariz., experience with high-altitude fights helps to a point, but only if you have the resources and the time to make the most of it.

Crouch was in Efrain Escudero’s corner for his win over Drew Dober in Mexico City, and he’s also trained multiple fighters for events in other high-altitude cities like Denver and Albuquerque, he said. He knew altitude could affect athletic performance, but he also knew that pro sports teams regularly visited cities like Denver without the benefit of weeks to prepare for a game.

“Basketball teams, they play at altitude sometimes,” Crouch said. “They don’t have time to acclimate. They fly in, play the game, win or lose and then fly back out. Their results don’t really seem to be predicated on the altitude, so I was curious as to the science of it.”

According to the experts he consulted, which included one pro basketball trainer, Crouch said, an athlete needs to train at elevation for at least 21 days for his body to fully adjust.

“If you’re not there for 21 days, they told me, you might as well go in as close to the fight as you can,” Crouch said.

That’s why, when preparing for a fight in Albuquerque last year, Crouch had his fighters training in nearby Flagstaff, Ariz., at an elevation of almost 7,000 feet, for two weeks before traveling to Albuquerque, which sits at roughly 5,300 feet.

“By fight day,” Crouch said, “we had been at altitude for 22 days.”

That comes at a cost, however, and in more ways than one. It’s one thing for a guy like Werdum to set up a training camp around himself, where he foots the bill for the facility and for his training partners. After all, he was the UFC’s interim heavyweight champ, fighting for the outright title in the main event of a pay-per-view. He was spending money to make money, in that sense.

But many other fighters rely on teammates who can’t always uproot their lives for a month, and they fight for purses small enough that the expense of a month-long, high-altitude training facility might destroy their already meager profit margin.

For his squad’s Flagstaff training camp, Crouch said, they received help in the form of a $10,000 check from one of the team’s sponsors.

“And it cost us every penny of that $10,000 to run it,” Crouch said.

There are also certain logistical concerns. Crouch’s team was lucky enough to have a high-altitude locale just a two-hour drive away, but that still meant driving training partners up there and back every day, he said, and time spent at that training camp was time he couldn’t spend back at the Lab’s primary location in Glendale, where Crouch teaches the jiu-jitsu classes.

“You’re taking everybody away to do this, and it kind of guts our gym,” Crouch said. “We can make it work, but it does take money. If you don’t have the money, it’s not really an option.”

Then again, the option to avoid fights at high altitudes also isn’t one that all UFC fighters have. Especially in relatively new markets like Mexico City, the UFC has certain fighters that it wants to use to appeal to local audiences. Fighters like Tecia Torres, for instance, can do local media spots entirely in Spanish, which is something few fighters on the current roster can do.

“So I understand why they want me in that market,” Torres said, “But given the opportunity to say yes or no to another fight there, I don’t think I’d say yes, just because I wouldn’t want to have another bad performance.”

Crouch feels the same whenever his fighters are offered bouts above 5,000 feet or so. “I would love to never fight at altitude,” he said, even though his experience preparing fighters for those conditions would seem to be an advantage. The trouble, he said, is that it’s tough to calculate exactly how it will affect each individual on any given night.

Just look at Velasquez, he said, who seemed to run out of gas in a major way for the first time in his UFC career.

“You can’t measure it completely,” Crouch said. “I’d rather take that piece of the equation away if I can. But you work for the UFC, you don’t really get to choose. There are very select people in the UFC who get to choose when and where they fight.”

For complete coverage of UFC 188, check out the UFC Events section of the site.