UFC 177 The Biggest Insane Pay Per View Card Change. Weight Cutting Safety

US Elite Combat

As UFC 177 has the one of the craziest line up change in UFC history. Dana White gets explicit.

Do we re think the lines of weight cutting? Should the doctors or the commission reassess the body fat percentages? What is safe and what is potentially harmful to the athlete? I can remember wrestling in the Iowa State Tournament in which they tested my body comp by Hydrostatic underwater weighing. My body fat percentage was at 2% 5’11” and 98lbs. This is the Gold Standard for

Poor Dieting : Calorie Intakes, Water Intakes

Poor Weight Cutting : Saunas, Suana Suits, Plastic Wrapping

So UFC 177 Pay Per View has taken hit due to these issues. Not to say that it isn’t still a great card and the fighters that are on here aren’t worthy. It isn’t what UFC hyped it to be. While two Arizona Mix Martial Artist are both effected by this. Anthony Birchack who doesn’t get the opportunity against Dillashaw nor does he get his UFC debut. The other well we already now.

Most notably, Ex- UFC Champ Renan Barao (32-2 MMA, 7-1 UFC) fell ill during his weight cut on Friday. UFC newcomer Joe Soto (15-2 MMA, 0-0 UFC) now meets bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw (10-2 MMA, 6-2 UFC) in the headliner. Why was Joe Soto picked over Anthony Birchak who’s record (11-1 MMA and was Maximum Fighting Championship Bantamweight Champion)? Joe Soto had already was coming from a 23 day turn around to fight Birchak. Seems to me that it might have been better to have Birchak get the offer.

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Henry Cejudo (6-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC), who was set to become just the third Olympic gold medalist in UFC history, also was forced to halt his weight cut. That prompted the cancellation of his bout with flyweight Scott Jorgensen (15-9 MMA, 4-5 UFC). Jorgensen had put all the hard work and is out of the show. Henry Cejudo has had difficulty in his weight cut to 125 lb which has been documented in his contract with Legacy Fighting Championship. Really hard to believe the USA Gold Medalist Wrestler hasn’t been able to maintain his weight. Is it his camp, does he have the wrong team behind him or is 125 unrealistic weight for him. Should he re think about fighting at 135lb?

Cutting weight is even more likely to affect a fighter’s mental state than his physical one. In a study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, wrestlers who lost more than four percent of their body mass before a match showed “significantly higher levels of confusion on the day of the competition,” even though the weight loss had no adverse effects on strength.

In many ways, the fact that MMA fighters usually go months between fights can work against them when it comes to weight issues. Those who are less diligent about their diet tend to balloon up while waiting for their next fight offer, resulting in a stiffer challenge.

The guys who use the sauna to cut ten or twelve pounds, you’re forcing your body to expel so much water so quickly that it’s not discerning what water is safe to cut from the system and what water isn’t. It’s just taking it from wherever, and it becomes dangerous. That’s where you see guys who don’t recover from their weight cut. They look sluggish in their fight, and they defeat the whole purpose of all the training and the conditioning from their fight camp.

Grueling stay in the sauna, puts the body in exactly the wrong state for dropping weight, upping cortisol levels as the fighter’s stress increases.

Having the proper diet is vital, eating the correct caloric levels to have all your major organs functioning.