Is Spence a weight bully?

There is no such thing as a weight bully. Fighters have been cutting weight since almost the beginning.

It’s just another way for fans to criticize fighters they dislike.

 

Ofcourse there is. There are guys who kill themselves to make weight, take stimulants to lose weight. And require hours of IV to recover.

 

And it would affect their performance accordingly. If you can *safely* make the weight, even rehydrating considerably afterward, then that's a proper division for a fighter. There's no way to objectively say which guys are "killing themselves" to make the weight.

I've asked before how to identify a weight bully using a standard that would apply across the board, and no one can do it. People just want to discredit guys' accomplishments or make excuses for their preferred fighters.

 

Its a grey area but I would say that being a weight bully is a thing. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr at middleweight was a particularly egregious example.

 

It's a made up term by arm chair fans. I've never seen a fighter, trainer, or promoter use it

 

Spence is definitely a weight bully.

But so is Crawford.

 

There are Pros and Cons. Just like there are pros and cons to making the weight comfortably. As some guys will be much bigger than you.

If the weight bullies failed to make the weight how could they bully people at that weight? Your argument makes no sense. They have to manage to squeeze down, even through fainting and organ failure.

The guys that are weighing-in like Skeletor and/or gaining 20lbs on the night are good indicators.

 

Gervonta Davis recently was just complaining about this with Ryan Garcia as the reason he imposed a rehydration clause on him.

In regards to Spence I don’t think he has ever blown up much, comparatively.

 

What about the fighters who say " this is my last fight at this division, it's getting too hard to make weight".

 

I don't understand your first point. Note that I said *safely* make weight, not collapse at the scale. That's an issue to be avoided for obvious health reasons of the dehydrated fighter. Same reason they went away from same-day weigh-ins, down to 12 rounds, etc.

Most fighters gain considerable weight after the weigh-in, even as they move up in weight divisions. And many of them look like Skeletor, but people selectively choose which guys are bullying. It's silly.

Just look at Manny Pacquaio as an example. Was he a weight bully at 112 and the other lighter divisions as he moved up? Of course not. He was a very young man who for a time could safely make 112; as he matured physically, he no longer could make it and moved up to weights he could make safely.

Same thing with ODLH & Mayweather at 130, or Roy Jones at 154. System working as intended.

It's especially weird to accuse Spence of being a weight bully because he has spent more than a decade at 147! If he were killing himself to make weight, he'd have had to move up by now. Y'all need to use some common sense.

 

Yes a man who has spent his career at 147 is a weight bully

 

I responded above but that's how it is supposed to work. People boil down to the lowest comfortable weight and then move up over time, unless they simply don't want to cut. The "bully" advocates are arguing that guys should move up just because they are big for their division, even if they could make the lower weight without problems. Makes no sense.

 

Literally no one said that. The argument is whether or not there are guys that abuse the system by wanting to come in as big as possible. Which is true.

There are two ways to make a weightclass. Either you wholly shrink down to the weight, including muscle loss to limit extreme dehydration, or you use the flip side of that, and try to come in as big as possible, and rely on extreme dehydration to make the weight.

 

That's exactly what they are arguing. Otherwise, what do the people crying "bully" want these fighters to do in order not to be bullies?

Your second sentence reveals the fatal flaw in your argument. Almost every fighter wants to come in as big as (safely) possible; that's not abusing the system, that's the way it almost always has worked.

Just look at the examples I provided already. Or go back even further. SRR first rose to fame at 135 until ... he could no longer make the weight. So he goes on to epic achievements at 147 & 160. But that doesn't mean he was a weight bully at 135. See how silly the weight bully thing sounds?