How was it with weight cutting in the past?

I don't care about Canelo. Every titlist in every lighter division who can't step in the ring and fight at the weight class where he claims to be champion is a fraud, to me.

IF you are too emaciated and dried out just getting down to the "maximum" weight and you can't actually compete and win at the weight you claim to be champion of, then you aren't really the champion of that weight.

 

Absolutely.

 

My understanding from medical literature and experts quoted when day-before weigh-ins became a thing and guys started cutting massive weight (and then hooking up to IVs to rehydrate, which isn’t allowed I think anymore) is that brain fluid does not rehydrate quickly — you can’t just drink a lot or even use an IV to get back to normal hydration and expect the dehydrated brain fluid will rise to safe levels.

So rehydrating will help stop someone from overheating or dehydrating and becoming woozy/weak during a fight, it won’t replenish brain fluid to protect the brain.

(Is there an actual test for brain fluid levels? Do they drill a hole in your head and stick one of those oil-check things in your head like a car? I thought I’d read that they only discover cases of brain fluid dehydration when someone suffers a brain injury and they have to cut the skull open.)

 

Spinal tap is definite and MRI can get there but it's trickier. Optic nerve evaluation can suggest elevated intracranial pressure when optic nerve swelling is present in both eyes.

 

I remember someone on this forum posting an account by a trainer from a hundred or so years in which a trainer was basically bragging about how he could starve/dehydrate a fighter down to a low weight without impacting their ability to fight. There was something in there about the trainer giving the fighter a spoonful of tallow to prevent sore throat because of dehydration. It was insane.

Yeah, I'm skeptical of the ideas Dubblechin is putting across.

 

Good to know. But I don’t think fighters are getting spinal taps in the afternoon on day of fight, nor MRIs.

 

Well even in day-of weigh-in fights, they ate meals after weighing in and drank water so a welter who weighed in at 147 in the morning surely was closer to 150 in the ring, so there goes most of history haha.

 

There's no easy way to check that as of now.

Here's the weight cutting post I mentioned:

 

Nobody’s getting a needle painfully injected into their spine with fluid extracted and getting into the ring a few hours later, I assure you. My late wife had two back surgeries and she had to undergo several of these. It hurts to even watch.

As for the old days, these weenies today couldn’t handle a spoonful of tallow. They’d rather pop another clembuteral and a couple of HGH injections. That’s what most of them are cutting weight to offset. It’s a dirty, dirty game.

 

Right, if they just barely made 147.

Boxers fighting for titles when weigh-ins were the day of the fight often came in well below the limit, since they came in at their "best" weight. If your best weight was 157, you weighed 157 on the day of the fight and you fought in the middleweight division (155 to 160).

Today, if your best weight is 157, you're probably a welterweight, drying out to make 147, because you think you can add 10 pounds of fluids in the 30 hours before the fight takes place.

Hell, when Terry Norris defended his junior middlweight title against Meldrick Taylor, Norris weighed 149 the day of the fight and so did Taylor. (They were both FIVE POUNDS under the 154-pound limit). You never see that anymore ... a junior middleweight champion (148 to 154) weighing in and fighting at a weight nearer the lower end of the weight class.

In many of Norris' defenses, he was well under the limit.

That was common before the weigh-ins were pushed back and people started becoming weight bullies. Basilio weighed 154 when he won the middleweight title from Robinson. Robinson was 155 when he won the title from Lamotta and was 154 when he lost it to Turpin. Hagler weighed 157 for Duran and Hamsho.

Now it's all about how much can you possibly dry out 30 hours before the fight, which is usually a couple of divisions below what you'll actually weigh when you get in the ring.

 

What ideas am I putting across? If you're the 175-pound champ, you should be able to enter the ring at 175 pounds and defend your title at the weight you claim to rule over?

Is that a radical idea?

 

Let’s talk about LaMotta since you don’t like weight bullies. Go look at his record and see how many times he came in at 165 (give or take a few ounces) to fight a welterweight who comes in at 152 or 154 fully clothed? He’s the original weight bully — he was a light heavyweight fighting welterweights … but boy he sure didn’t play it both ways — you don’t find many (if any) LaMotta fights where he’s 164 and fighting a guy weighing 175 or 180.

It’s not a new thing. As long as it’s equal, or relatively so (and today it is in far more cases than LaMotta’s weigh bullying because BOTH guys are cutting weight) it’s a fair fight.

What you can’t do really is compare a 147-pounder from the same-day weigh-in days with one of today who comes into the ring at 165 … that guy needs to be compared to light heavyweights of yesteryear.

 

That's literally what I said in my first post.

 

I didn’t read the entire thread. I started at the top of the second page where I responded to your post saying you don’t consider someone a true champion unless they compete at the weight limit of their division (which I take to mean an in-the-ring 150-pounder who weighed 147 at the same-day welterweight title weigh-in isn’t a true champion in your book).

I’m not trying to argue, just discussing.

I lean toward today’s rules are today’s rules and yesterday’s are yesterday. I don’t consider Ezzard Charles and Rocky Marciano to be cruiserweights even though they would be if they weighed in at the same weights today as they did in theirs. Others might. I’m not sure how well today’s guys would get on with more frequent fights or smaller gloves or London Prize Ring rules, just as I’m not sure how well those guys would do if transported to our time.