Ian McCall details illness that forced him out of UFC 208: it “scared the sh*t out of me”

Earlier this month, on the undercard of UFC 208, fan favorite flyweight Ian McCall was expected to make his long-awaited return to the Octagon. Regrettably, his comeback fight was foiled when he came down with a serious illness on the eve of battle. This unfortunate twist marked the fifth consecutive time the flyweight star has had a fight scrapped.

On the latest episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, Ian McCall detailed his illness, and well, let’s just say it doesn’t sound fun.

“I’ve never made weight that easy in my entire career,” he said of the days before the illness took hold. “You ask anybody, usually you stop drinking water 24 hours out from weigh-ins. I cut weight Thursday night and it was going so well that I had five glasses of ice water throughout the night. So then I figured I could eat a little bit. So I tried to eat a little bit of salad and I threw that up. But I figured that was just the dressing or something messing my stomach up. So I had at least a cup of almonds, about five cups of water, I cut the rest in the morning and then when I was trying to gain weight back my body wouldn’t. I couldn’t hold on to anything. I kept throwing up everything…”

“By the next morning, I had still only gained five pounds,”McCall continued. “Everything I tried to eat, I threw up. And I was throwing up in front of all the other fighters. Every single chance we ended up having to be in a group in public, I ended up f*cking throwing up.”

“I asked them, I’m like. ‘Listen, just let me fight.’ And they looked at me like, ‘No dude, you need to go to the hospital.’ Then they were gonna do emergency gallbladder surgery which they didn’t have to do, thank god. This whole thing scared the sh*t out of me. When the doctor says, ‘Oh well you could die, you never know,’ I’m like, what the f*ck do you mean you never know?”

“[My gallbladder] was super shrunk – contracted. I guess [from the dehydration]. And then they saw shadowing and some other stuff [on the tests] and they thought I had gall stones… Then they did a more advanced version of the ultrasound and they didn’t see anything so they didn’t have to do [surgery]. So basically we’re just running tests, been running tests all week.

“I’m still skinny. I went home a day later than I was supposed to go home and I was still under 135 pounds – 132 pounds. I wasn’t able to hold food down until Tuesday. My body just f**kin’ failed me.”

Do you think Ian McCall will ever make it back into the UFC’s Octagon? Sound off, PENN Nation!

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 2/21/2017.