UFC 304: How do you get ready for a cage fight that starts at 4 a.m.? Depends who you ask

Right around 3 a.m. local time Sunday, the brand new Co-op Live in Manchester, England, will be rocking for the start of the UFC 304 main card. Lights will be flashing. The arena sound system will scream out “Baba O’Riley” as the big screens show an almost poetically violent UFC highlight reel that gives goosebumps to even the most seasoned cynics of this tortured sport.

Then, somewhere close to 6 a.m., the main event will be wrapping up and throngs of fans will stumble out in the light of a new morning. The whole thing is what you might call unconventional timing for a pro sports event. Or, if you’re UFC interim heavyweight champ Tom Aspinall, you might call it “absolutely terrible” for the local fans.

But what about the fighters? How does one prepare one’s brain and body to compete in the wee morning hours?

Put this question to the fighters on the UFC 304 main card, and you’ll get an array of answers.

“I haven't changed anything yet,” said UFC lightweight Paddy Pimblett, talking to Yahoo Sports the week before the event. “I think we might change the schedule a little bit and start getting up at different times and stuff, but I just think it's ridiculous. What's the point in coming over to the UK and doing a card in the UK, but having it on American time?”

The point, from the UFC’s perspective, is to maintain the regular pay-per-view schedule for North American audiences. Every look inside the promotion’s finances has suggested that the bulk of the UFC’s pay-per-view revenue comes from the U.S. and Canada, so when possible the company prefers to keep to its regular TV schedule while trusting that enthusiastic international ticket-holders will adjust as needed.

For American fighters, this could potentially be an advantage. If the event takes place at its usual time, albeit on British soil, perhaps they won’t be required to make many adjustments.

“Me, I’m trying to just stay on (the) American time zone,” said Belal Muhammad, who challenges Leon Edwards for the UFC welterweight title in the main event. “I’m going out there fight week, like a normal fight week, and I'm going to be trying to sleep during the day. … But at the end of the day, it’s a fistfight. Whether it’s day or night, if he’s standing across from me I’m going to be awake.”

That sentiment was echoed by King Green, an American fighter who faces Pimblett on the undercard. For him, adjusting to different time zones and having his body thrown into turmoil by travel demands is just part of the fight game.

“I'm just playing it by ear, brother,” Green said. “It’s like, jet lag and blah, blah, blah. Sleepless nights. It's just been crazy, but I don't care. I came to fight. That other stuff doesn't matter. I'm a warrior. When they tell me to get up and go, I'll get up and go and fight and fight hard.”

But according to Dr. Jeffrey Durmer, a neurologist who specializes in sleep and its effects on athletic performance, athletes ignore these issues at their peril. Durmer has served as the sleep performance director for the U.S. Olympic weightlifting team and has also worked with other Olympic squads on maximizing performance through sleep.

“It’s one of those things that people often miss,” Durmer said. “It’s not just athletes. It’s a systemic issue in our culture, how we just sort of disregard the importance of sleep.”

According to Durmer, there is some validity to Muhammad’s goal of staying on U.S. time in anticipation of UFC 304. If the main event is scheduled to start at what would be a normal fight time in, say, Las Vegas, it makes sense for Muhammad to prepare as he would for any other UFC event back home in the states.

“His approach, that’s the tact I would take as well,” Durmer said. “But one thing I would encourage those fighters to do is to be prepared for the sleep deprivation of the travel, because all the normal cues will be off when they get there. That’s going to be something they’ve got to quickly adjust to, and that means having a real hard and fast plan for how they’re going to handle things like their exposure to light, their eating and drinking schedule, because all of those things play a major role in circadian rhythm.”

For fighters trying to stay on their usual time zone, Durmer said, he’d recommend doing things like wearing sunglasses when attending to fight week media responsibilities.

“They definitely should be avoiding as much excessive light as possible,” Durmer said. “Keep that hoodie on, keep the darkness, try not to elicit a lot of wakeful responses.”

For British fighters, however, the calculation is different. Those fighters are already used to sleeping at the time when this event will be just starting. Ideally, Durmer said, they’d gradually prepare their bodies for that shift over a series of weeks. This is what the U.S. weightlifting team did ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. That meant tightly controlling exposure to sunlight and slowly adjusting eating, sleeping, and training schedules.

One fighter who arrived at a similar approach with the help of his own sleep specialist is Edwards, the UFC welterweight champ. Since he already lives and trains in England, he knew he’d need to adjust his training schedule to prepare for an unusual early morning fight time.

Ahead of this fight, Edwards worked with Dr. Ian Dunican, who holds a doctoral degree in sleep and performance. With Dunican’s help, Edwards set a training schedule to gradually prepare his body for a pre-dawn title fight.

“At first, I thought I had to straight away switch to training at 5 a.m. and stuff like that,” Edwards said. “But he basically said, you don't need to do that. Instead you just kind of gently shift your sleep and your training schedule hour by hour each week, just to slowly get your body to adapt to the training rather than shifting overnight and going fully nocturnal, where you’re missing sunlight, which your body needs.”

For Edwards, this required some cooperation from coaches and training partners. There’s only so much a fighter can do in the gym on his own, so preparing his body to perform early in the morning meant persuading those around him to adjust their schedules accordingly.

But as anyone who’s spent time in fight gyms or around fight people already knows, this is not always an early morning crowd. That’s where Edwards’ personalized approach to training camps came in handy, he noted.

“It's a small team that I've got,” Edwards said. “It's not really one of these American gyms where there's like 50 guys there, 50 coaches, everyone doing their own thing and trying to find sparring partners. I've got a solid team around me that, if I need to spar at 2 or 3 (o’clock) in the morning, they will show up for me. The camp is built around me.”

This is the exact approach Durmer would recommend for fighters on this card who are already based in England, he said. Simply showing up on fight night and winging it, trusting in the power of adrenaline to wake your body up and get it ready to perform at a peak athletic state, is “a really bad idea.”

Pimblett, undeterred, insisted that he wasn’t about to show up to the gym at 4 a.m.

“I don't think it'll make that much of a difference, because we’re getting in the cage and fighting, know what I mean?” Pimblett said.

Still, he acknowledged, the time of the event may constitute an edge for American fighters on the card. “I mean, me, Leon (Edwards), Tom (Aspinall), Molly (McCann), Arnold Allen? We’re all at a disadvantage to all the fighters coming over.”

Well, maybe not Edwards. With a title on the line, a little extra preparation might go a long way on Sunday morning in Manchester.