After Ray Borg's UFC 215 scratch, some fighters point to familiar foe: cutting weight

The UFC announced Thursday night that a “viral illness” was to blame for flyweight title challenger Ray Borg’s last-minute scratch from a fight against champ Demetrious Johnson at UFC 215.

Yet for several fighters, the real culprit was weight-cutting. Borg (11-2 MMA, 5-2 UFC) may have been sick heading into the event, but his rush to shed pounds pushed him over the edge.

“Get rid of the (expletive) weight cut, @UFC!” tweeted UFC interim lightweight title challenger Kevin Lee. “Guys are getting sick and ruining business. Add weight classes. Why are we waiting for someone to die.”

Longtime UFC lightweight Diego Sanchez chimed in: “Been saying this for years #moreweightclasses.”

Borg’s removal from Saturday’s pay-per-view event came just two months after UFC 213’s headliner was canceled due to last-minute illness. In an ironic twist, the cancellation involved the fighter promoted to UFC 215’s main event, women’s bantamweight champ Amanda Nunes, who suffered an attack of sinusitis and withdrew from the fight.

The culprit, according to Nunes, was her weight cut.

“I was unable to (breathe) and felt off-balance from the pressure in my sinuses,” Nunes wrote.

Despite her symptoms, Nunes was cleared to fight based on her blood work and a check for dehydration. UFC President Dana White said she would never headline another event.

This time around, the promotion took no chances. It’s unclear at the moment the sequence of events that led UFC officials to pull Borg from the event, but Association of Ringside Physicians President Larry Lovelace said the link between illness and weight cutting is clear.

“Extreme weight-cutting can certainly compromise your immune system,” Lovelace told MMAjunkie. “It can make you more prone to any kind of an illness, a viral illness or anything like that. Severe weight-cutting and dehydration really affects all the body systems.”

The UFC monitors fighters from the moment they arrive on fight week. Those over 8 percent of their target weight are subject to extra scrutiny and weight counseling prior to their next bout, per rules that were implemented in May 2016 with the addition of early weigh-ins.

The UFC’s new rules came in response to the California State Athletic Commission’s efforts to curtail extreme weight cutting. Just four months ago, the commission passed a groundbreaking 10-point plan that included greater scrutiny of weight classes chosen by fighters, bigger fines for missing weight, and recommendations for fighters who repeatedly miss weight to move up a division.

Had Borg competed in California, the commission might have instructed Borg to move up one division to bantamweight. But after this high-profile scratch, which followed two previous weight misses at flyweight, the UFC could potentially do the same.

At the 2017 Association of Boxing Commissions conference, Jeff Novitzky, the UFC’s VP of athlete health and performance, said 20 percent of the promotion’s roster had been counseled on weight management at the new Performance Institute. He noted that while more fighters had missed weight with early weigh-ins, those with weight troubles had been identified.

Novitzky also supported the recent expansion of MMA weight divisions, which include 165 pounds (super lightweight, 175 pounds (super welterweight), 195 pounds (super middleweight), and 225 pounds (cruiserweight), though UFC chief counsel Hunter Campbell cautioned against diluting the sport.

Lovelace said one of best ways to keep athletes from endangering themselves on fight week is to hold them to a predetermined weight limit.

“The answer is to have everyone know what their walk-around weight is, and never go below 10 percent of that,” he said. “That’s going to take a lot of resources to do that. It’s not the perfect world yet.”

Lovelace cautioned that doesn’t prevent fighters from losing a large amount of weight in a short amount of time. Like the CSAC’s plan, he called it a “good start.” But there’s a long way to go before the problem is even close to solved.

For more on UFC 215, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.