Do You Respect Fighters That Starve Themselves To Get An Advantage?

[letsgobrady]

Like Oscar fighting Forbes.

yea, exactly like that

[Ras44]

Well... it depends... because weight draining was not beneficial for Cotto, nor to Byrd. Whether it's being beneficial to Paul Williams is questionable. So, I'm not sure what weight draining in itself is really an advantage. It has more to do with at what weight you are at your best, more than how low you can go to preserve a height/width/reach/bone mass advantage.

[Bhopreign]

how could bernard be a naturall middlewight if he probably weighed close to 190 against calzaghe

They didnt fight at middleweight, youre not making any sense.

[Boofdatruth]

i have no respect for mayweather at 130 and hopkins at 160.

that's because you don't know what the word "respect" means..........look it up in the dictionary you phony ass phony......................

[letsgobrady]

They didnt fight at middleweight, youre not making any sense.

you claimed that oscar was more like a middlewight yet he fought at lower wight classes thats exactly what bernard did he fought his whole career at 160 but was really a light heavyewight and his fight with joe shows how big bernard really is

[Boofdatruth]

You could be right and that makes sense, just wish it wasnt that way, then we would have fighters fighting at weights they really should be at and we would see that they arnt as good or as imposing as some people think they are.

there are just as many positives and negatives for fighters who come down in weight as far as they can to gain some "so-called" advantage........they said dlh did this at 130......but he wanted a title.........if he was able to make weight, why not try it........

[Bhopreign]

you claimed that oscar was more like a middlewight yet he fought at lower wight classes thats exactly what bernard did he fought his whole career at 160 but was really a light heavyewight and his fight with joe shows how big bernard really is

Copy and paste where I said Oscar was more like a middleweight, until you do so I wont respond to you again, everyday someone puts words in my mouth.

[Bhopreign]

you claimed that oscar was more like a middlewight yet he fought at lower wight classes thats exactly what bernard did he fought his whole career at 160 but was really a light heavyewight and his fight with joe shows how big bernard really is

Im starting to believe your name derives from the sitcom and not football, if Hop was really a light heavyweight as you say he wouldnt have needed a "dream team" to get to 175 whenever he fought there.

[letsgobrady]

Im starting to believe your name derives from the sitcom and not football, if Hop was really a light heavyweight as you say he wouldnt have needed a "dream team" to get to 175 whenever he fought there.

he didn't need them to make 175 he used the same dream team for his fight with joe,was he trying to gain weight against joe?

[Kris Silver]

You want to know the REAL reason? It was so that the promoters could get publicity on a Friday to hype the gate and the TV audience for the fight for the next day. Saturday it would get lost in all the other sports news. I can almost guarantee you that having the Mayweather-Hatton weigh in on Friday made the promotion a million dollars more with the media circus it was.

This topics been on my mind lately, you know what, the above is exactly what I thought was the main reason, cynical but very true. Terrific post.

To those saying stuff like, it doesn't matter, it's all relative, it works itself out. Well to an extent but not that much. Like someone explain, starving and de hydrating yourself allows you to seriously mess with your weight. This isn't good for your health or the sport. Not only in terms of ppl's views of such things, but it's another complex thing to factor into the sport, that puts many in the mainstream off the sport, and not wanting to comprehend all these factors.

You end up with the whole weight system being undermined quite often, because one guy actually comes in 10+ lbs heavier than the other guy, which is enough to put him in the next weight division. How fair is that?

What's the point in weight divisions, when the variation in weight can be way beyond another weight division? Totally undermines it. This will always happen to an extent, but the extent right now is far too big, and it's largely due to being weight the eve before, and a much bigger gap between then and fighting. There's no valid reasons for changing that other than what Scott has described above, plus the odd other lesser factor.

A compromise I see is to have weigh in's the night before. But also have an enforced more low key weigh in on fight day. That way weight variation in fighters is transparent for the sport and fans to see and judge, factor in. Also means minimising weight variations, as there could be a tolerated change in weight between the 1st and 2nd weigh in. If it was not met, there'd still have a good few hours to more than likely be able to deal with it. It'd be as frequent as the last minute issues these days as there'd be keeping an eye on they're weight. So there we have the best of both worlds.