Fighters of the Past vs. Modern Fighters (Weigh-In Procedures)

If a fighter is draining ten pounds or more from his system then it is detrimental. If he has less than nine pounds, the weight is not THAT significant. It is a case by case thing. However Floyd Mayweather shows that weight means little if you are a talented and skilled fighter. You are also forgetting that old school fighters used to add quite a bit of weight as well. An example of this is heavyweights who'll put on about 5 pounds even though they don't dry out.

 

To be honest this is nothing new.

Back in the day fighters would often sweat themselves down in a sauna and purge themselves before a fight or even shovel coal for hours in a boiler room while wearing oilskins.

They just didnt get to put the meight back on.

Some fighters chose to drag themselves bellow their natural weight using such methods and some did not. I think that Jake LaMotta to give one example would give up little or nothing in size to McClellan

 

Even in old times there were all the time fights between managers for the time when the weigh-in takes place, one of the most popular was 3PM which left several hours to regain some weight, and in fight reports it can be read pretty often, how the difference in weight between fighters looked significantly larger than was the case at the weigh-in, ie when one fighter trimmed down a lot of weight and put most of it back on, while the other trimmed little fighting near his natural weight.

 

Back in the day you could get one fighter who employed these methods fighting one who didnt.

For example Robinson Lamotta was esentialy a welterweight fighting a light heavyweight in todays money.