ABC head: Weight cutting is going to kill, for no apparent reason
Mike Mazzulli: “They should suspend those corner people that tried to help him cut that kind of weight, first of all.”
Mike Mazzulli, Director of the Mohegan Tribe Department of Athletic Regulation, is one of the most experienced regulators in the history of mixed martial arts. And he’s the current president of the Association of Boxing Commissions. And he regulates Bellator’s overseas events when there is no commission.
When Ash Griffiths missed his contracted weight at UFC 200 in London, England, Mazzulli ordered the fighter to move up a division and compete at 165 or 170 (Mohegan has long recognized the “new” 165 division). You might expect a fighter to be angry, for having his livelihood threatened.
[Griffiths] said to me, ‘Thank God,’ recounted Mazzulli to Steven Marrocco for MMAjunkie. He came down to my weigh-in in a towel, walking through a hotel.
In the latest terrifying weight cutting episode, cameras followed Darren Till as he desperately tried to drop to the 171 cuttoff for weltweight. He was temporarily blinded, and ultimately failed by 3.5 pounds. Bizarrely he now sits at #2 in the rankings for a division he failed to make.
The ABC president was not impressed.
I was appalled seeing seven people sit there and push this kid to the point where he lost his vision, said Mazzulli. They should suspend those corner people that tried to help him cut that kind of weight, first of all.”
They think it’s OK to do what they did to that kid? They’re going to get him killed. Right now, I am so upset at this whole industry.
You’re going to be sitting there with a girlfriend, with parents, who lost their kid to something so stupid, for no apparent reason. What’s going to happen is you’re going to have a mother and a father losing their child over weight-cutting to fight – not in a fight.