California Says Weight Cutting At Forefront of MMA’s Problems

There has recently been much talk regarding the dangers of weight cutting. With fighters cutting absurd amounts of weight to fight at lower weight classes, the dangers of weight cutting are being discussed more and more.

At UFC 183 alone, John Lineker missed weight by 4 pounds, marking the fourth time he’s missed weight in his 8 Octagon appearances. In addition, co-main event fighter Kelvin Gastelum missed weight by 9 pounds after being ill and unable to finish the weight cut.

Now, California State Athletic Commission Executive Director Andy Foster is speaking out about the dangers of weight cutting, saying that it is the most dangerous aspect of combat sports at the present time.

“Something that’s not talked about, that I think is done by a lot more people than performance enhancing drugs, is the drastic weight cutting that you see. That’s just on display at every weigh-in, where you see a fighter walk up, they barely can walk because they’ve cut so much weight, and the trainer will be there holding a bottle of Pedialyte or Gatorade. And that’s problematic.”

“Here in California I’ve sort of seen it more and more. It seems like it’s gotten worse. One of our commissioners, Dr. Lemons, a neurosurgeon, he’s very close to this topic and he said ‘this is the most dangerous thing in combat sports right now, this drastic dehydration then rapid rehydration.’ We did a study here at CSAC where we had one fighter, I believe he weighed 171 on Friday, he was 201 on the very next day. That’s too much. That’s too much. You see stats like that often from many of the shows that we regulate, and that’s too much.”

– via MMAFighting