Is this the most dangerous part of combat sports?
This week, we will be talking about something that is very relevant and a very dangerous issue in the world of combat sports. And that is the issue of weight cutting. Whether it is boxing, wrestling, MMA, or anything other sport you typically only fight someone at an agreed upon weight. For example, if you are a lightweight fighter in the UFC, you must weigh somewhere between 150-155 pounds to be allowed to fight. This is to make the fight as fair as possible, so there is not a large strength differential that could potentially result in serious injury to another fighter. Typically, fighters who fight in a certain weight class weigh much more than what that weight class is. For example, most of the fighters who fight in the lightweight division walk around at a weight of 180+ pounds. Most of this weight is lost in the week leading up to the fight. What fighters tend to do before the weigh in is cut almost all of the water out of their body, and limit to eating basically nothing in order to make weight. There is literally no way to safely lose 10+ pounds in less than a week, let alone 25 pounds or more. A great example of this is a fighter that I talked about in my last post, Kevin Lee. Kevin Lee was fighting for the lightweight title, and tends to walk around at over 185 pounds. In an interview one day before the weigh in, he admitted that he weighed around 175 pounds which puts him 20 pounds over the weight limit! The following day, Lee was able to make 155 by the skin of his teeth, and looked like a skeleton walking out to that scale. Below are pictures from mmafighting.com and sherdog.com that show what Lee normally looks like, and what he looked like at the weigh in:
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Anyone with eyes can see that this is clearly not healthy, and no human being should have to drain their body to his point. This is only one example, but I could find you thousands of pictures online of fighters all over the world who have to do this to their body on the regular. It does not take someone being a doctor to realize that fighters dropping so many pounds so drastically is not safe for their bodies. Not only do you look like a shell of your former self, but your body is getting beat up from this. In a great article from www.joe.co.uk, author Ben Kenyon speaks with multiple sports scientists who state that “Not only are you losing so much water, but if you’re reducing sodium and messing around with your electrolytes, your electrolytes are responsible for muscle contraction and making sure everything, including your heart, keeps going.” You will be putting your heart at risk of stopping if you cut a tremendous amount of weight. On top of that you also will be putting your brain at a tremendous risk as well. In the same article the author states “If guys are doing massive amounts of dehydration there’s a chance that they’re not going to be able to ensure the fluid volume around their brain is back when re-hydrating. If they’re not completely re-hydrated and haven’t got all this fluid around their brain back then any strikes to the head are going to be more devastating because they haven’t got that cushioning there.”
A great example of a fighter who decided to move up in weight in order to cut less weight is current welterweight Donald Cerrone. For most of Cerrone’s career, he fought in the lightweight (155 pound) division. He was a great fighter in that division, and was consistently ranked in the top 10. But, about two years ago he made the decision to move up to welterweight (170 pounds). He cited the reasoning being he was just cutting too much weight, and felt that he was doing more harm to his body than he should. After that switch, Cerrone has been a straight killer. He has looked more explosive than ever, and has been able to take down some of the best fighters in the division with relative ease. I believe that all fighters should look at this decision that Cerrone has made and apply it to their own careers.
Now you probably are wondering is there any way to solve this problem? For as long as it is legal fighters will be doing it because they feel it gives them the upper hand. I believe that the fighting community needs to work to slowly figure out some solution. I think the major fighting organization like the UFC need to create more divisions. Currently there are weight classes about every 10-15 pounds. It definitely would break up the divisions and spread out many of the top fighters in different classes, but for the betterment of the sport if there was a weight class for every 5 pounds I think fighters would move to fighting closer to their actual weight. This ultimately will make weight cuts easier and help fighters to remain slightly safer.
While it seems like there is no realistic way, I actually heard an idea that I found to be very intriguing from UFC commentator Joe Rogan. On his podcast, he brought up the idea of bringing in a group of people that will monitor the fighters weight throughout their camp, much like a drug test. For example, the organization USADA can spontaneously drop in wherever a fighter is at during the year and get a drug test. This ensures that a fighter is not cheating or using any sort of banned substance. If a fighter claims that they are interested in fighting at the 170 pound weight class, then there could be workers who randomly come in and check on him and ask him to weigh himself. Let us say the safe number is ten pounds overweight at most. This would mean that an inspector could come in and weigh a fighter during the middle of his camp, and if he happens to be 12 pounds overweight then he could face punishment, or the fight could get cancelled. While this seems like something that could be very hard to do, I think that finding some way to implement this suggestion that Joe Rogan had is something that could be a possibly solution. Below is a video of Rogan on his podcast talking about his idea to combat extreme weight cutting:
Not only would monitoring fighters weights make for better health of fighters, I also believe that it would help improve fights and provide much more excitement. Think about it, if a fighter is not getting proper blood flow to his heart, and there is not the proper amount of water in the brain, they are much more likely to get hurt faster. I think that if a fighter is properly hydrated and his body is functioning at the best of its abilities, fighters will be able to get more out of themselves. They will also be able to absorb more hits, and lessen the possibility of injury. I hope that someday we will be able to figure out the proper solution, because I love combat sports and hate to see such great athletes do irreparable damage to themselves so frequently.
Special thanks to mmafighting.com and Hard Knock Fighting Championship for the pictures you see above
https://hardknocksfighting.com/how-to-cut-weight-for-mma/
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