The (impossible) case against cutting weight

Renan Barao

Recently I was talking to a pro fighter about one of the most brutal weight cuts of his career, one that ended with him lying uselessly on the floor, half out of his mind, muttering over and over to no one in particular, “This is so stupid.”

And it is, once you think about it. It really, really is.

Picture yourself trying to explain the world of mixed martial arts to an alien from outer space, or a caveman unfrozen from centuries-old ice, or even just to your particularly out-of-touch cousin from out of town. Imagine what you’d say when you get to the ritual of the weigh-in, where severely dehydrated and undernourished pro athletes gather to prove that, for a very short period of time, they can trick a scale into providing an inaccurate description of what they really weigh. Imagine explaining that the reason they make this highly unpleasant and at times downright dangerous sacrifice is to qualify for a lower weight class, which will allow them to face smaller opponents over whom they’ll have a size advantage.

Only, with regards to that last part, that’s not how it really works, is it? For the vast majority of fighters, there is no advantage that comes with the weight cut, since almost every other fighter also cuts weight. You might be dropping 20 or 30 pounds on fight week, but you’re essentially doing it just so you’ll get to face someone your own size on fight night. All this suffering isn’t so much about gaining an advantage as it is about not sacrificing one.

Which makes you think that, if they really want to make their lives better and their sport safer, the best thing fighters could do would be to enter into an agreement with one another not to cut weight. Then you think about the advantage that one fighter might gain by violating that agreement when his opponent adheres to it, and you start to get a pretty good sense of why it probably won’t ever happen.

Think about it: If everyone were to get on board, fighters could end a practice that none of them enjoy, but which virtually all of them feel obligated to participate in just to avoid falling behind. They’d also be ending a practice that can be dangerous to their health, shortening their careers and detracting from their performances on fight night.

You want to hear true tales of suffering and woe? Don’t ask about the fights or even the training. Ask fighters about their weight cuts. There’s hardly anyone south of heavyweight who doesn’t have at least one horror story about the process, usually followed by a different kind of horror story about being a shadow of their true selves in the fight itself. And that’s when the cut goes relatively smoothly.

When it doesn’t, we get instances like the one we saw with former UFC bantamweight champ Renan Barao, who was knocked out of a title fight at UFC 177 by his own weight cut. We also get situations like the one at WSOF 15 last weekend, where Melvin Guillard came in so heavy that he had to agree to give up a large percentage of his pay just to keep the fight together, having already given up the chance to fight for the lightweight title by missing weight.

Over the years, we’ve heard numerous proposed solutions to the problem, ranging from increasing the number of weigh-ins to changing their date, moving them closer to fight time and limiting the opportunity to rehydrate. The fact that amateur kickboxer Dennis Munson Jr. recently died following a bout in which he’d cut weight for a same-day weigh-in ought to serve as all the reminder we need that increasing the risks of a weight cut won’t necessarily convince fighters that those risks aren’t worth taking.

Fighters can die cutting weight. They can make themselves sick. They can pass out, shut down, all within a day of what is already a dangerous and difficult competition. Getting hit in the head isn’t great for your brain as it is. Dehydrating that brain prior to the onslaught of blows seems just plain crazy, even if some can do it better and safer than others.

So why do it at all? Mostly because everybody else does it. True, there are occasionally some other reasons, such as changing weight classes in search of a fresh start or a new path to the title, or just to avoid a certain fighter. Mostly though, fighters have to cut weight just to stay even with the other fighters who are also cutting weight. If they could just agree not to do it, wouldn’t they be both be better off for it? Wouldn’t they be healthier on fight night, not to mention happier in the week leading up to it?

Most fighters I polled on the subject said yes, definitely. They also said they weren’t too optimistic about seeing the practice phased out. They were pretty sure that, whatever regulators come up with to limit it will become little more than a new system to be gamed or manipulated, which means that the saunas and scalding baths and sweat-a-thons will likely continue. The people most capable of ending the practice, at least in its most extreme forms, are the ones participating in it.

Several economists I asked pointed out that it’s kind of a prisoner’s dilemma. If we all agree to fight in the weight class closest to our natural weight, then the one who gets the greatest payoff is the one who betrays that agreement in order to fight in a lower division. The best thing fighters could do for the collective good is cooperate. After all, even with the current system, it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll fight an opponent who weighs exactly what you do. It only guarantees that you’ll fight an opponent who weighed what you did yesterday. What happens if you’re only willing to cut 25 pounds, but he’s willing to cut 30? What happens if he can do 35, or 40?

Weigh-ins are a useful bit of theater. They look very official, and they grant us the illusion of a precise brand of fairness. They’re also a last pre-fight photo op for promoters and media.

Behind it all is a borderline insane, at times dangerous system that only appears to level the playing field. The best thing fighters could do for themselves and for their bodies is to agree to knock it off. It’s also probably the last thing they’re going to do, at least on their own.