Time was closing on the 1:30 PM interview time UFC newcomer Sodiq Yusuff and I had set. 

I phoned anyway, figuring he could call me back if he wasn’t quite ready to roll. His face popped up on my computer screen from the the low angle of someone carrying things along with his phone. 

“Give me one second so I can get inside the house,” Yusuff said.

My view shuffled from his face to a car door, down to the ground, and back to the front seat of the car as I waited in silence. Finally, as he seemed to collect all of his belongings, he stabilized my view, resting just under a box of two dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts. 

The newly signed UFC featherweight settled into his house and stashed the treats out of sight, but he made no excuses when I brought up the 24 pastries he brought home mid-afternoon. 

“Y’all weren’t supposed to see that!” Yusuff yelled with the laugh of being comedically called out. “Yeah, that’s definitely celebration time." 

These doughnuts were a long time coming for the muscle-bound Nigerian, who cashed in an opportunity on Dana White’s Contender Series into a UFC contact with a decision win over Mike Davis. 

Yusufff cuts weight heavily to get down to his 145-pound limit, and that process can be just as taxing mentally as it is physically. Luckily for Yusuff, he has everything down to a science. 

“When I’m cutting weight, I put it on Food Network," Yusuff said. "I know it sounds counterintuitive, but I’m telling you, it works. If there [are] any other fighters who need some type of coping system, I’m telling you, this works.”

In addition to letting the Food Network run while he sheds the pounds, Yusuff keeps a list going to make sure he doesn’t forget anything he wanted to eat in that time. 

“I put it on Food Network, I look at everything that they make, and I start picking out and making a list of the stuff that I’m going to eat after,” Yusuff said. 

Like with any fighter, the week leading up to the weight cut can be the most brutal. However, the night before marks the low point—the time where water and food intake hits its lowest point and the hunger picks up. 

That time requires a change in strategy from Yusuff’s original game plan. 

“The night before the weigh-in, most of the time I can’t sleep because I’m so hungry,” Yusuff said.  “I go on Instagram and look at some Instagram pages like GrubHub, ice cream hashtags, and stuff like that.”

This is where the Krispy Kremes likely made their way onto Yusuff's hit list. And now that the hard work is out of the way, he can start knocking off a few names on that list. 

“The fight is done, it’s time to celebrate—just got to make sure I don’t go too crazy," he said. 

Regardless of whether all 24 doughnuts were for him or not, Yusuff has a little bit of extra time to work them off. 

Having injured his leg in the Contender Series fight that won him his spot in the UFC, Yusuff is now just sitting and waiting for more tests to see when he can get back in the cage. 

“I got it X-rayed that night, and they said they see a couple lines in there,” Yusuff said. “They weren’t sure if it was fractured or not, so they want me to get another X-ray once the swelling has gone down.”

Still, Yusuff is sure he’ll be back soon working with teammate James Vick, who has a fight coming up later this month, Aug. 25, against Justin Gaethje at UFC Fight Night 135 in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

“I’m probably gonna be in the gym soon anyways,” Yusuff said. “I just want it to be at a point where I know I’m not being stupid and I’m not doing more damage than is necessary.”

From there, it’ll be a pretty quick trip back to being in fight condition, and we can expect to see him ina ction as soon as they are willing to book him. 

“As long as the leg is good, I probably just need a month or two to make sure I’m in peak condition.”

That is, of course, as long as that sugary list didn’t get too long.