2024-04-28 12:30:33
Every sport reached a point where its most die-hard fans asked themselves: what can be innovated? Sometimes this question goes beyond a simple improvement in the applied technology or some other change in the regulations; In combat sports, there is a change that could save lives.
“Schedule the weigh-in an hour before the fight and that’s how we all win, the athletes win, the advertisers win, television wins, the entities win, the doctors win and the morgues lose,” crude words declared by former world champion Sergio “Maravilla” Martínez a few weeks ago on his stream program. In the comments of that video another question was asked: Wonder, if the weigh-in is the same day as the fight and the boxer doesn’t make weight, what happens? It is better to lose an event than a life.
Resorting to one of the dozens of ways to lose weight in a short time is what most fighters do who do not have good preparation. The ideal would be for this weight to drop in the weeks prior to the fight, but the ideal does not always happen. Running in a winter jacket for hours in the middle of summer, getting into a sauna until you lose consciousness or spending days fasting, all to reach a weight.
“I preferred not to die to make the weight in the fight and have a slightly worse time in the fight because my rival was going to come out with a few kilos more than me,” Maravilla also recalled. The worst thing about the whole issue is that those fighters who lose kilos in a matter of hours are the same ones who gain them from the weigh-in to the fight.
Leandro Souza died in a sauna while trying to lose 5 kilos for an evening against the fighter Gabriel Brasil in Shooto, a mixed martial arts organization. A week and a half ago he weighed 72 kilos, the weigh-in cut-off was 57 kg. Those last few days he managed to reduce more than 10% of his body mass, but he was still missing.
I was 26 years old. Feijao, as he was known in the industry, was going to open the billboard of the 43rd edition of that contest in Rio de Janeiro that boasted of having José Aldo and Renán Barao as top figures. Souza was already sick with fever and dizziness even before starting the exorbitant weight loss, his Nova Uniao Delfin Cascadores team did not suffer any grief for the death of their fighter. Needless to say, Shooto 43 was never made.
“My opponent was wider, stronger, more powerful and could last longer, but what did that person have to go through to give the same weight as me? An outrage,” Martínez concluded the talk. Jordan Coe was going to fight in Thailand, surely, to arrive wider, stronger, more powerful and last longer during the fight, he decided to arrive with just the right weight required.
I was 20 years old. A Muay Thai practitioner, the Scotsman weighed 3 kilos more than necessary to fight; that March 2017 he spent his time running through the Thai streets to become fit. Dressed in warm clothing. With 36 degrees of temperature. His lifeless body was found in a passage by local police.
A week ago, excited about what was the most important fight of his career, he had posted a letter on Facebook: “Every day I learn more and more. Thank you to my team, family, friends and fans for always helping me. I recommend everyone to look inside themselves and follow their dream. No matter what it is.
Yang Jian Bing was fighting 2 years ago in the One Championship, belonging to the mixed martial arts circuit, as happened with Souza and Coe, the Chinese was about to face the star of his life against Geje Eustaquio. Instead of reaching the octagon he was admitted to the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Manila.
I was 21 years old. He died of cardio-circulatory arrest due to severe dehydration, again, from trying to reach an impossible weight in a matter of hours.
BBC showed in a documentary titled “Extraordinary Bodies” how the MMA fighter Dean Garnett was looking to lose about 6 kilos in just one night. He is shown unconscious, sleeping covered with various padding and chewing ice as “food.” He passed the weigh-in and the opposite side is also shown, the desperation to gain weight in the next 24 hours to arrive with energy for the fight, a process just as bad as the previous one.
What could be a solution to have prevented these three deaths (and the many others that could happen)? Perhaps what the former Argentine boxer is proposing is not so wrong, although on some occasions the weigh-ins in lower leagues already occur on the same day as the fights. Such is the case of Jordan Coe, who died hours before the fight.
The ideal in certain cases would be to foresee to avoid. That the governing organizations or entities themselves take their work more seriously and monitor the preparation of each fighter for each particular fight. In this way, if there is any dangerous behavior, by the team or by the fighter himself, it will be sanctioned monetarily or even with a ban from the evening itself.
There will be a trap, there always is. But if the trap itself can cause death, the sport has to take action on the matter.