Big changes are afoot in the way that athletic commissions deal with how fighters cut weight.
The serious issue of how competitors put their health on the line to make sure that they make weight limits that are so often nigh-on impossible to reach has returned to the headlines recently.
ONE Championship flyweight Jianbing Yang tragically passed away in December after complications arising from a weight-cut in the Philippines took the Chinese fighter’s life.
MMA fighter dies after reported weight cut complications https://t.co/cpaQS9l8ik pic.twitter.com/p6G7YpDq97
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) December 11, 2015
That led to the promotion revising their weight-cutting programme so that ONE officials can now monitor the weight of their fighters throughout camp and ensure that they compete at their so-called “walking weight.”
And now, some similarly-inspired methods are in place in the United States as the California State Athletic Commission have passed new emergency rules at a meeting on Tuesday evening.
“Dehydration and weight-cutting are the biggest problems facing mixed martial arts today,” CSAC executive officer Andy Foster said. “There are more mixed martial events in California than any other state, so this is the biggest problem facing this commission.”
The new regulations see a ban in place on severe dehydration as a means of cutting weight. The method of draining one’s body of as much water as possible has been the most popular method of making weight in the history of combat sports but the CSAC will now monitor the hydration levels of all fighters licensed by that commission by using gravity tests and physicals.
If fighters are found to be severely dehydrated then the commission will be entitled to force the fighter to compete at a higher weight class in future.
Interestingly, the commission has adopted USADA’s position on intravenous therapies as a means of re-hydration as IV bans are now also banned by the CSAC. Oral re-hydration is now the only means of getting fluid back into fighters’ bodies.
There will also be a change in the weigh-in timing as the commission moved to allow more time for athletes to hydrate themselves by weighing them in 30 hours ahead of competition, rather than 24.
While there is no perfect solution to the weight cutting issue, it’s certainly promising to see it given such prominence and focus as commissions look to protect fighters from the unsafe rules, and themselves.
