Kansas AC to debut new weigh in protocol
At Bellator 150, fighters will be given the option to weigh-in between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. the day before the fight — six hours prior to the typical 4 p.m. weigh-in start time.
Mixed martial arts is coming to understand the dangers of the extreme weight cutting that has come to be the norm. California State Athletic Commission executive officer Andy Foster organized a weight cutting summit last month, and a number of ideas were generated.
Now the Kansas Athletic Commission is implementing one of them.
Fighters cut a 10, 20, or more pounds of water weight for a fight, and weigh in over 24 hours before a fight. But complete rehydration is not always possible in 24+ hours. A 2013 study found that 39% of fighters stepped into the cage with some degree of dehydration. ?
Next month the KAC is going to try allowing fighters to weigh in earlier. Marc Raimondi has the story for MMA Fighting.
At Bellator 150, fighters will be given the option to weigh-in between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. the day before the fight — six hours prior to the typical 4 p.m. weigh-in start time.
If a fighter does not want to weigh-in between 10 and 2, he or she can still do it during the regular, 4 p.m. weigh-in. Per KAC rule, if a fighter misses weight during any of those periods of time, he or she will still have two hours from that point to attempt to make the contracted limit.
KAC head Adam Roorbach will be in a room at the fighter hotel during those hours overseeing the protocol. When a fighter wants to officially weigh-in, he or she will announce it to Roorbach. Then, Roorbach will contact the opponent’s team to give them the option to watch while the fighter weighs in.
Bellator’s 4 p.m. weigh-in, which airs on the promotion’s website, would not be the commission’s official weigh-in for the fighters who already hit the scale between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Cory Schafer, Bellator’s director of regulatory affairs, said it was important to give fighters a choice to do things a new way, rather than just outright altering the rules.
“We’re not changing it,” Schafer said. “We’re offering them another option. They can do it exactly the way they’re accustomed to.”
Foster will present to his commission two new rules, banning IVs for rehydration and extending the period of time in between weigh-ins and the fight, at CSAC’s next meeting, he said.
If the extended weigh in becomes standard, there is theoretically the potential that fighters will try to drop even more weight. However, it is difficult to image fighters cutting any harder than they are at present.
Bellator 150 is headlined by a bantamweight champion Marcos Galvao vs. Eduardo Dantas.
