Rapid extreme weight loss reform coming to California

Cutting weight hard had been a staple of collegiate and high school wrestling programs for decades. Then in 1997 three wrestlers died in a space of 33 days.

Jeff Reese died crawling to the scale, reported SI. On Dec. 9, glassy-eyed and pale, his legs too weak to hold him after he had shed nearly 17 pounds in three days, Reese collapsed and expired on the cold floor of a locker room in Ann Arbor’s Crisler Arena. Billy Jack Saylor, a freshman at Campbell University in Buies Creek, NC, and Joseph LaRosa, a senior at Wisconsin-La Crosse died in the month before while cutting weight.

In response to the three wrestling deaths in 1997, the NCAA took a number of steps to make wrestling safer, including:

•Banning training in a room hotter than 80 degrees:

•Banning self-induced vomiting;

•Banning extensive food or fluid restrictions;

•Requiring hydration tests:

•Requiring body fat checks; and,

•Restricting the amount of weight that can be lost.

Following the NCAA’s lead, high schools too instituted a variety of precautions.

While not as dramatic as three deaths in 33 days, the number of weight cutting incidents in MMA is reaching a critical mass. These include:

•On Aug 29 Renan Barao passed out while making his final cut, and was out of the main event at UFC 177.

•On July 14 TopMMANews reported that Jer Kornelsen had his heart stop in the sauna.So I passed out and stopped breathing in the sauna trying to make weight,” said Kornelsen. “I guess they did CPR on me for a while and I came to in the hospital. Seriously pissed off and feel horrible. Sorry to my team, Battlefield and mostly my opponent!

•On June 16 TOPMMANews reported that Jordan Murray had emergency gall bladder surgery. “All my weight cutting has finally caught up to me I guess,” said Murray. “Looks like I have to remove my gallbladder after spending all day in emergency and losing a lot of blood the Doctor says its 100% from cutting weight, crazy!

•The UG’s own Useless, Ulysses Gomez, was hospitalized late last year while cutting weight and was out the Cage Warriors 62 headliner in Newcastle, England.

•Nova Uniao flyweight fighter Leandro “Feijao” Souza passed away from a stroke while cutting weight last year at Shooto Brazil 43 card in Rio de Janeiro. He was 26 years old.

•UFC welterweight Brian Melanson revealed he suffered kidney failure from cutting, and nearly died.

•Lightheavyweight T.J. Cook suffered kidney failure in the ring.

•Korean Sengoku vet “Shin Ramen” Yoon Young Kim suffered a mild heart attack while cutting.

•Veteran Marcus Davis revealed that a second cut to 155 in the MFC nearly killed him.

•UFC heavyweight Daniel Cormier had to miss his shot at Olympic gold in 2008 when his kidneys failed in Beijing. It nearly killed him. Cormier was cutting weight to compete at 211 lbs, and now fights at 205.

Now Andy Foster, the highly-respected Executive Director of the California State Athletic Commission, told Showdown Joe Ferraro that he intends to reform the rapid extreme weight loss practices common in mixed martial arts, and to a somewhat lesser extent in boxing.

“Next week I’m actually going to Las Vegas to discuss this issue with the Association of Ringside Physicians,” said Foster as transcribed by Erik Magraken for the excellent Combat Sports Law blog.

“What I can tell you is something’s going to be coming… We want something to happen. I think that (caliper measurements) they’ve had some good success with that. So I think that is certainly coming. Another thing I think is the gold standard and something I wold support is hydrostatic testing to determine the minimum weight that you can fight at for the year… Those are two ideas.

“What we have right now is not working… What really got me into a panic, so to speak, was after the UFC (177) here in Sacramento, the day of the weigh-in. We have two of our fighters unable to weigh in, or licensees, because they’ve lost too much weight… I think that’s a problem. That’s want kind of stirred me to start taking action.

“The ARP is certainly on board with doing something. They issued their statement last year about weigh-ins…(once) we establish the lowest weight…that lowest weight be placed on the fighters permanent record both with the ABC (Association of Boxing Commissions) database and the Fight Fax database… When a commission pulls the Fight Fax and looks up a record, we can see right here and we can make sure they are not contracted for less than that amount of weight.”

The purpose of weight classes is to protect fighters. Unfortunately, the practice of cutting to meet those classes is now injuring a substantial number of fighters. The practice needs to be reformed, and before another fighter dies. No one will be happier than the fighters if they have to cut say five pounds less each. And fans will get better fights as fighters will be less exhausted from the cut. Everyone will win.

You can listen to the full interview here starting at the 13:00 minute mark.