Daniel Cormier employs terry-ific towel trick to make weight for UFC 210 date with Anthony Johnson

With five minutes to go for the official weigh in, neither Daniel Cormier nor Anthony Johnson had yet appeared, raising the specter that both of UFC 210 Main Event’s fighters were over the 205-pound limit for their light-heavyweight title fight.

With four minutes to go, Daniel Cormier, looking simultaneously paunchy and emaciated, appeared in his sweat pants from behind a weigh-in room screen, before retreated back out of view. With three minutes to go, he re-emerged sans clothes with a towel hiding his privates. Shedding the underwear didn’t do the trick, as he weighed in at 206.2 pounds.

Cormier then left the room altogether, before returning a two minutes later to weigh in once more — this time with a phalanx of towel men in tow.

To the bewilderment of Ariel Helwani — who’s astonished commentary is heard in the video — the reigning champ weighed in at exactly 205 pounds. But if one examines the tape closely, it becomes painfully obvious that Cormier, under the pretense of peering at the scale, is pressing firmly down on the large towel in front of him to “lose” the 1.2 pounds in realtime.

Here's Cormier on the towel pic.twitter.com/wtZEgpGAja

— Brett Okamoto (@bokamotoESPN) April 7, 2017

Later, when DC was confronted with his apparent trickery, he rather dubiously pleaded innocent.

A post shared by ufc (@ufc) on Jan 25, 2017 at 6:08pm PST

The weigh-in excitement didn’t end with DC’s miracle weight loss. With literally seconds left on the weigh-in clock, Johnson appeared on the scene, stepped on the scale, and comfortably made weight at 203.8 pounds. Now, we can only hope that the fighters’ meeting in the octagon will be as dramatic as their weigh-ins.

As clever as Cormier’s sleight of hand was, we’re thankful he and Johnson didn’t collaborate on a towel trick like the one seen on France’s Got Talent.