Getting rid of weight cutters

[Mike]

Examples in another professional sport where this didn't work?

Boxing, kickboxing,, all combat sports. Literally no combat sport uses a system like this because it's dangerous. The only way to remove risk of injury is to weigh them all the way up to fight day, then be willing to cancel the fight at the last second if they can't make weight.


Thing is, there's absolutely no benefit to the promotion. Extra expense for EVERY fight. Greater risk for cancellation for EVERY fight. And for what, to appease an extremely small minority of fans that think weight cutting is "cheap"? Why bother.

 

[Mike]

lmao that would be awesome, order a PPV, sit back and fight 1 they weigh in at the cage.

Announcer: Didn't make weight! Forfeited! Time for match two!

- fail

Announcer: Let's skip right to fight 3!

Fight 3 and 4 fail to make weight

Bruce Buffer: AND NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT OF THE EVENING! NVM it's cancelled

Exactly. There's zero chance the ufc or any other org risks something like this happening. Especially when there's no upside for them. I have yet to hear a good argument for why orgs would take on extra expenses for no reason. People fail to grasp how for profit ventures work.

 

[Fergelmince]

Boxing, kickboxing,, all combat sports. Literally no combat sport uses a system like this because it's dangerous. The only way to remove risk of injury is to weigh them all the way up to fight day, then be willing to cancel the fight at the last second if they can't make weight.


Thing is, there's absolutely no benefit to the promotion. Extra expense for EVERY fight. Greater risk for cancellation for EVERY fight. And for what, to appease an extremely small minority of fans that think weight cutting is "cheap"? Why bother.

I said show me where it did NOT work. None of those sports ever tried what I proposed. Read the post next time.

 

[steny]

Maybe i am missing something, but if they do the following:

- step 1: do the normal weight in 1 day before the fight.
- step 2: fighters make weight, proceed to step 3.
- step 3: weight them in right before they go into the octagon, if they miss weight by a large margin (more than 2 - 3 kg tops let say), make them automatically forfeit the fight.

What would the drawbacks of this method be?

Tarded. There would be plenty of last minute canceled fights or lots of dehydrated fighters in the octagon.

Full week weigh ins is another stupid idea.
FIghters would maintain weight for the whole week. That means one week day by day dehydration procedure before the weigh in. That would mean an enormous rise of kidney problems among the fighters.

 

[Ysgramor]

asking any one in a weight based sport to maintain fight weight for a week straight is ridiculous and would never happen, whether it's healthy or not. Is conor fighting at 155 unhealthy? i don't think so, yet he would never be able to hold 155 for a week

They are suppose to be professiona

Tarded. There would be plenty of last minute canceled fights or lots of dehydrated fighters in the octagon.

Full week weigh ins is another stupid idea.
FIghters would maintain weight for the whole week. That means one week day by day dehydration procedure before the weigh in. That would mean an enormous rise of kidney problems among the fighters.

This is one of does posts that further proves MMA/ufc is not really a sport. Every fucking other sport, were the atlethetes compete all around like football they are expected to stay in shape, yet for fighters its ok to:

- be out of shape for the better part of the year
- put your body trough hell when you go skelletor to muscles in one day.

But yeah that's what retarded, expecting atheletes to keep in shape, lulz.

 

[Cooliox]

great idea.

hope they refund me for my ppv buy once every fight on the main card ends in forfeit

 

[MikeMcMann]

Tarded. There would be plenty of last minute canceled fights or lots of dehydrated fighters in the octagon.

Full week weigh ins is another stupid idea.
FIghters would maintain weight for the whole week. That means one week day by day dehydration procedure before the weigh in. That would mean an enormous rise of kidney problems among the fighters.

If you think fighters would come in dehydrated then that means you have no concept of WHY fighters cut weight.

They do not cut weight so they can come in at 155lbs for a 155lb fight. They cut weight so they can come in at 170lbs for a 155lb fight. If they are not able to regain the weight (same day weigh ins) there would be zero advantage to cutting and coming in at 155lbs and there would only be loss (coming in dehydrated and thus less cardio).

With no cutting, since no one would be doing it then no one else would need to, there would be no more kidney strain or other 'cut' related health issues.

 

[Lets Go Champ]

Just a guess but is that ManRam in Game 2 of the 2007 ALDS after hitting the walkoff HR against KRod?

Shit yes it is!
Good call buddy

 

[Bluntforce420]

Shit yes it is!
Good call buddy

Love the Sox, expecting big things this season. Will be weird without Ortiz though

 

[Mike]

I said show me where it did NOT work. None of those sports ever tried what I proposed. Read the post next time.

None of the other sports do it for a reason.


How about you explain who's paying to constantly monitor the fighters weights? The fighters would never ever agree to pay for it. The orgs would never pay for something like this that doesn't generate profit. I hear these half baked ideas over and over, yet you guys never explain who's going to pay for it and why.


You're talking about a considerable expense to monitor hundreds of fighters, AND higher odds of fights being cancelled at the last minute. You understand that orgs give zero fucks about "the purity of the sport" or whatever other nonsense makes you think cutting weight needs to stop, right?

 

[Mike]

Lol at the idea "we'll implement rules, and that'll FORCE people to do what we want them to!"


Yeah that's not how human nature works, and it never has been. "I know we'll make drinking illegal, then nobody can drink! Surely nobody will smuggle alcohol or make homebrew alcohol in a bathtub. We TOLD them not to"


You have this half baked claim it's for fighter safety. Guess what fighters WILL attempt to dehydrate to cut anyway, it's what they're used to doing. Fighters will do anything to try to find an advantage. You would only end up making it MORE dangerous for the fighters. You're going to have guys walking around dehydrated for weeks trying to stay in their current weight class.

 

[SPB]

Exactly. There's zero chance the ufc or any other org risks something like this happening. Especially when there's no upside for them. I have yet to hear a good argument for why orgs would take on extra expenses for no reason. People fail to grasp how for profit ventures work.

This is exactly how we got to day-before weigh-ins. In 1983 Michael Spinks was supposed to fight Eddie Mustafa Muhammed on HBO. back then boxing had day-of weigh-ins. Eddie missed weight, the HBO show had to be cancelled, costing millions of dollars to the network.

After that they instituted day-before weigh-ins, so fighters had time to keep cutting if they missed weight. It is a decision all about the green.

And now everyone thinks it is the correct way to go. Except those of us who know that for the majority of the history of combat sports the combatants weighed in the day of the fight.

 

[Mike]

This is exactly how we got to day-before weigh-ins. In 1983 Michael Spinks was supposed to fight Eddie Mustafa Muhammed on HBO. back then boxing had day-of weigh-ins. Eddie missed weight, the HBO show had to be cancelled, costing millions of dollars to the network.

After that they instituted day-before weigh-ins, so fighters had time to keep cutting if they missed weight. It is a decision all about the green.

And now everyone thinks it is the correct way to go. Except those of us who know that for the majority of the history of combat sports the combatants weighed in the day of the fight.

Exactly it's a decision based around money. I've never denied that, in fact I've argued the entire time that money is the reason these other weight cutting ideas won't happen.In the modern era, fighters cut weight for an advantage.

If you want to try to change that, it's going to be a massive cost to the org with no benefit to them whatsoever. In fact they risk more fight cancellations, and injuries/illnesses from fighters finding dangerous ways to break whatever system they implement.

Corners will send concussed fighters out for another round. Towels are rarely thrown in. Camps will let fighters dehydrate until the point they lose consciousness and have to be hospitalized. This is not an industry where you can expect them to err on the side of caution or safety.

The ufc has something like 500 fighters. So logically if you mandate around the clock weight monitoring, you're looking at a staff of at least 100 people to follow fighters around and weigh them all the time, and make sure they're not cheating. And track them down when they start hiding under cages and across town in saunas, which they WILL do. Who is paying to staff ~100 people (minimum) to do this, with zero return on investment?

 

[johncola]

I've proposed 2 solutions in the past. You're free to dig up my old threads:

1. Fight-time weigh-ins. Literally 0 rehydration time = 0 incentive to cut. The only caveat would involve fighters who accept fights out of shape AND fail to lose the excess weight in camp AND refuse accept a fine or pull out. Such fighters would have to cut without the intention of rehydrating, which is obviously extremely dangerous. Random camp weigh-ins would help solve these rare cases.

2. Get rid of weight classes. Just schedule fights between fighters who are obviously of a similar size. Simple. Random year-round weigh-ins could accompany this idea. Titles could even still exist; they just wouldn't be attached to a particular weight. Top fighters get titles. If they lose them, they lose them. If two top champs exist and are a similar size to each other, there's unification possibilities.


I like idea #2. I think that's the future.

 

[Huligani]

step 4: cut them

 

[10mm]

Never gonna happen. Its here to stay 4 evaaaaa

 

[campbecc]

Fixed. Too many fights could potentially get canned your way.



False. This wouldn't prevent anyone from fighting it would merely make people fight at higher weight classes. The only exception would be fighters that are > 265 LBs.

they need to get rid of the cap on HW anyway.

 

[johncola]

Never gonna happen. Its here to stay 4 evaaaaa

Defeatist and part of the problem. Many people have your attitude. If those people didn't exist, maybe it would happen

 

[randomalias]

So what's the point of everyone just moving up a weight class? Why would fighters who have worked their way to the belt give up that belt just because some idiot on Sherdog thinks weight cutting is bad?

Personally I think it could make fights better, for three reasons.

1. Both fighters are at their actual peak, and not recovering from severe dehydration.

2. Less wrestling dominance, because wrestlers tend to be great at weight cutting due to all the practice through highschool and college.

3. Possibly we'd see a bit more variation in nationalities, as fighters from countries where weight cutting doesn't really happen would get a look in. Asian fighters in particular.

 

[ocfightfan]

Sure lets ruin every card going forward.