Media The Answer To Weight Cutting; Is ONE's hydration testing the answer?

Unpopular Opinion:
If fighters cut extreme weight to gain themselves a size advantage, they should know or at least feel how bad it's on their body. If they continue to do it multiple times over multiple years knowing/feeling how bad the weight cut is and dies..

Insert if he dies, he dies gif.
 
Same day weigh-ins or dual weigh-ins. Day before and fight night. That's the best way to see your actual weight. If you are gaining too much weight for fight night you will have to move up. Only a certain percentage of weight can be gained back on fight night, if you pass that limit you are cutting too much weight and will be moved to your natural weight class.

Only exceptions will be for champion vs champion fights in other weight classes.

This is why in boxing they have hydration limits. You aren't allowed to be past a certain weight on fight night. They limit the massive weight cuts and weight gains on fight night in major fights.
 
While the science behind the hydration testing makes perfect sense, I don't believe ONE when it comes to divulging what's really going on with weights and hydration most of the time. Everything is behind the scenes. I've never believed them.
 
DelanoRunnymede said:
No weight cutting would be the perfect answer, but seeing as that’s never happening, One style hydration tests and weight brackets are definitely better. It’s reflected in the fights as well. They put on an awesome show.
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how do you know that's the hydration testing or the steroids that are allowing those performances?
 
Pancake Sprawl said:
how do you know that's the hydration testing or the steroids that are allowing those performances?
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You’d assume not being on the edge of death the day before fighting would be beneficial. That seems common sense to me.

If they’re taking steroids as well, that’s another conversation.
 
No. No way the UFC is going to risk losing more fights to hydration test failures on the day of the fight. THey'd have to carry 6 backup fighters for every card. Imagine a huge title fight you spent months promoting and then they fail a hydration test.......now it's cancelled or a non title fifght.

Healthier for the fighters but terrible for business.
 
DelanoRunnymede said:
You’d assume not being on the edge of death the day before fighting would be beneficial. That seems common sense to me.

If they’re taking steroids as well, that’s another conversation.
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if it was so beneficial then why do fighters cut weight? the real answer is it depends on 3 things: the individual, how much they're cutting, and the kind of style they fight. Conor made his career doing insane cuts and is undefeated at 145lbs. he went up and lost to a hand picked journeyman on short notice. it didn't benefit him.

it's not another conversation. how can you tell if it's the steroids or the actual hydration testing that is making the fights good? the answer is you can't until you remove one of them from the equation. so to put their good fights all on the hydration testing isn't entirely truthful when other things could be affecting them.
 
FIghtxIQ said:
Same day weigh-ins or dual weigh-ins. Day before and fight night. That's the best way to see your actual weight. If you are gaining too much weight for fight night you will have to move up. Only a certain percentage of weight can be gained back on fight night, if you pass that limit you are cutting too much weight and will be moved to your natural weight class.

Only exceptions will be for champion vs champion fights in other weight classes.

This is why in boxing they have hydration limits. You aren't allowed to be past a certain weight on fight night. They limit the massive weight cuts and weight gains on fight night in major fights.
Click to expand...
They often have those hydration rules and or clauses but those guys usually pay whatever is needed and they jump back to whatever they need, but you dont see that many weight misses like in MMA. You wont see/need change unless there are major incidents, like a main eventer dying from weight cutting related problems, the closest thing to a solution would be to revamp weight classes with smaller gaps and actual hydration rules, those are unexistant in MMA, even in ONE FC there are clearly issues with their system.
 
If you can make the weight you can make the weight, leave it as it is imo.
 
DelanoRunnymede said:
No weight cutting would be the perfect answer, but seeing as that’s never happening, One style hydration tests and weight brackets are definitely better. It’s reflected in the fights as well. They put on an awesome show.
Click to expand...
By weight bracket do you mean weight class?
One's LW is technically UFC WW.
 
Pancake Sprawl said:
if it was so beneficial then why do fighters cut weight? the real answer is it depends on 3 things: the individual, how much they're cutting, and the kind of style they fight. Conor made his career doing insane cuts and is undefeated at 145lbs. he went up and lost to a hand picked journeyman on short notice. it didn't benefit him.

it's not another conversation. how can you tell if it's the steroids or the actual hydration testing that is making the fights good? the answer is you can't until you remove one of them from the equation. so to put their good fights all on the hydration testing isn't entirely truthful when other things could be affecting them.
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For every Conor there is a Robert Whittaker, Dustin Poirier or rumble Johnson. Also worth noting that Conor used an IV to rehydrate at 145 which obviously helps.

Like you say, it’s hard to speculate wether the hydration, alleged steroids, or a mix of both make the fights more entertaining, but It definitely doesn’t hurt going into a fight hydrated.
 
TorontoTO said:


TLDR: No, ONE's whole hydration testing is nonsense
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It is not nonsense. The issue is they allow cheating for their favorite and top fighters and they do everything behind the scene. If the UFC did this I bet USADA or some other organization would take this over. A body fat % test, day before weigh ins, day of weigh ins and hydration tests the day of before the fight and weigh in and a day before and heck maybe even 2 days before.

If USADA can pee test people like 10x during their camp then they could also weigh fighters during camp to make sure they are not say 40lbs above the limit. Then weigh them 2 days before with tests, then a day before, then the day of. Fighters now are always arriving at least 2 days before to the fight location it seems.
 
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Overall I think the worries we have about weight cutting are unfounded in a lot of ways.

- Nobody in the history of the UFC has died from weight cutting in the thousands of weight cuts that have taken place.

- If you're an extreme weight cutter then there's a cardio and even skill disadvantage because so much of your camp is about cutting weight, so there's a trade off against someone who doesn't.

- How many lower weight UFC fights are slow paced affairs with people gassing anyway?
 
To simplify it, i'd have 2 rules.

1. Stay within certain acceptable hydration levels 1 hour before the fight
2. Weigh no more than 1lbs over the weight limit of the weight class 20 min before stepping into the cage.

If you're 155lbs, you can step into the cage no bigger than 156lbs...

Yes, I know. You all will complain that so many fights will be cancelled due to people not making weight.

Well tough shit. Gotta start somewhere, and it's going to take some time to adjust. Give the fighters time to test out their ideal weight. But after a few test runs, i'm sure fighters could easily dial it in.

Just set a date when everything changes and people will just have to deal with it. Maybe a month of no MMA, no big deal for me. UFC is watered down anyways. They can take a month off to address this issue and implement a real change for the better.
 
I feel like weight cutting isn't nearly as bad as it was back in the day. You heard way more horrific weight cutting stories back then, and guys clearly were fatigued more often from weight cutting.

Maybe because of USADA you don't see guys hitting the heavy diuretics anymore. I bet guys were using LASIX and other types of drugs all the time from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s and then using IV's to rehydrate.
 
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