Professional MMA fighters must meet weight requirements before their fights in order to slot into a specific weight class. Failure to do so can prevent the fight from going ahead. Achieving the desired weight can be a testing process for the training team and one that requires extensive planning in terms of meals, calorie intake, and training patterns.
Weight misses can be problematic, but they can also be avoided. Weight is not a fixed number, even throughout the day. You can weigh more after a meal than before, and even your water intake during the day can affect your weight. That means the time of the weigh-in can affect whether a fighter makes a weight – Yoel Romero, who missed weight by just 0.2 pounds at UFC 225 against Robert Whittaker, becoming the first fighter in history to miss the weight for two title fights. He missed out by a fine margin and was then given further time to make the weight. It’s why some fighters don’t take on fluids before a weigh-in and even train immediately before, just to shift a tiny bit more.
Of course, a poor training regime or poor lifestyle choices can cause a missed weight. Rafael Alves missed weight by a huge 11.5 pounds at UFC Fight Night 185. At first, he blamed the weight miss on eating bad salmon the night before he got on the scales; however, he later admitted a personal tragedy before the fight made him decide not to take part, at which point his weight ballooned. It only underlines there are many reasons a fighter may miss the cut.
Table of Contents
What is Weight Cutting?
The process of weight cutting involves managing water weight leading up to a weigh-in, with the express aim of not missing the weight target. Fighters are known to employ dehydration techniques, such as steam rooms, and severely limiting fluid intake to reduce their overall weight. Immediately after the weigh-in, they aim to rehydrate and take the fluids back on drastically.
This is a dangerous technique and certainly not one to be copied by fans. A good weight loss program that works will always encourage a balanced diet and personal approach to weight control rather than a drastic measure such as weight cutting. However, when trying to make a weigh-in, the slower process of managed diet and achievable exercise goes out of the window. Of course, extreme weight cutting can be dangerous and have adverse effects on performance and health.
How Can a Fighter Safely Make Weight?
As with general weight control, a fighter should always have a plan to drop the pounds in the months leading up to a fight rather than having to cram it all in at the end. This is a good method for ensuring that the weigh-in provides no surprises, but of course, that is easier said than done. Anyone who has tried to lose weight knows goal setting can be a challenge. You might want to be 140 pounds for your holiday, but when you board the plane, you’re 142. That’s fine for most people, but not fighters. Instead, they need to work with nutritionists or dietitians to develop meal plans that ensure they meet their nutritional needs while creating a calorie deficit for weight loss.
Ronda Rousey was known to work with a nutritionist to ensure her diet leaned into weight control leading up to fights, meaning she didn’t need to weight cut at the end. Doing so can affect performance, and at her pomp, Ropusey was one of the best in the octagon. She ensured her meals featured lots of vegetables, healthy fats, and lean proteins while ensuring processed foods and sugars were cut down, or omitted completely, to reach her required weight class.
Balancing nutrition with intense training sessions and conditioning workouts should enhance a fighter’s fitness and support weight loss. High-intensity interval training (HIIT), cardio exercises, and strength training can help burn calories, improve metabolism, and promote fat loss. Balancing training with adequate rest and recovery is crucial to prevent overtraining and injuries.
That isn’t always possible for a fighter. Chael Sonnen explained how eating properly and training regularly would result in him losing three pounds, on average, per week, which wasn’t enough to make a fight weight he needed to hit. He switched to drastic weight cutting and dropped 36 pounds. However, as if to perfectly illustrate our point, he was left feeling weakened and in no shape to fight. Is it better to hit a weight and do it to the detriment of performance, or to not hit a weight at all?
