fighters draining themselves to make weight?

Over time dehydration will damage the kidneys.........................

 

But if you believe Mayweather he literally almost killed himself making weight for the Pac fight. Again, if you believe Floyd that is.

 

I say that Tommy Hearns didn't belong in those lower weight classes all the time. There are two strategies for making an abnormally low weight for your size. You can cut weight by dieting, exercising, and sweating right before a fight and then rehydrate after the weigh in. Or you can have a really weird diet eating like a supermodel so you are skin and bones looking like an Auschwitz survivor. Tommy Hearns was the second type. He always had the build of a light heavyweight, so he'd have around eleven inches of reach and four inches of height advantage, and he hit like a light heavyweight, so he could crush the welterweights or junior middleweights he was bullying. His parents probably didn't feed him enough when he was a kid, which led to him looking like a scarecrow and being able to fill out thirty pounds to a more natural weight over the term of his career.

There are ways to get down to lower weight classes. We know enough about physical education that with proper diet and exercise almost anybody can fluctuate their body to be healthy at a variety of weights. The problem is that most people don't have the discipline of a Bernard Hopkins to go on a severe diet exercising every day for years in order to maintain the weight. They want to do a big cut for a day or two instead of doing without as a way of life.