By Francisco Hernandez: It is no secret that Boxing is a brutal sport, it is dangerous and risky, but it can be made more lethal by allowing fighters to enter the ring deprived of vital nutrients and water for prolonged periods of time. Fighters have an ideal weight where they are stronger, faster, and more resistant. Then why do some fighters choose to enter the ring so deprived of food and water? There are basically two reasons for this: In some cases it is to gain a physical advantage and in other cases it is purely for the financial gain.
The first reason is to gain a physical advantage over an opponent. A fighter makes a lower weight and then after the weigh-in balloons up to his normal and heavier weight making him physically stronger than his smaller opponent. We have all heard the fight commentators tells us something like this -the guy fighting at featherweight after the weigh-in now weighs as much as a welterweight. This is the reason that mediocre boxers so often appear impressive, because they are physically big and they fight in small weight divisions. They are really big guys picking on little guys. Because they are given so much time to balloon up, they enter the ring bigger fighters. One recent example of this is Celestino Caballero, the man is truly a mediocre boxer, yet he looked impressive in the featherweight division. Caballero moved up one division, looked terrible and was beaten by an unknown club fighter. It looks that at one inch short of six feet tall, he could no longer make the featherweight division without living on water and lettuce. Yet to eat better and hydrate better he will need to move up not one division to super featherweight but to junior welterweight. At super featherweight Celestino still looks dry as a raisin, weak as a rag doll. Yet if he moves to a comfortable weight like junior welterweight, his mediocre boxing skills will go nowhere and he will not have any significant physical advantage over anyone.
Although young fighters are able to manipulate their weight with some success there is a risk to this strategy. The human body can only take so much of this yoyo shift in weight; eventually it takes a toll on the body especially as the fighter gets older. There comes a day when this advantage is no longer a plus but a dangerous risk of death or serious injury. The fighter now finds that ballooning up doesn’t replenish his strength, he becomes slow, loses his quick reactions, his feet wobble; he is susceptible to being easily knocked out.
Casual fans probably don’t know who Johnny Owen was. Owen fought Lupe Pintor for the bantamweight title. Guadalupe Pintor was a great boxer, but he was not known as a heavy puncher, his punch was at most respectable. Yet tragically Johnny Owen died in that fight. Johnny Owen was 5’8” and the Bantamweight limit is 118 pounds. This means that Johnny Owen was mostly bones when he fought Pintor.
The second reason that boxers are willing to drain themselves to the point of putting their lives at risk, is the same reason for what makes the world go around, money. Recent examples of this practice have been the fighters that have faced Manny Pacquiao in the current stage of his career. You name them, Oscar, Hatton, Cotto, Margarito, they all looked like prunes. The only exception was Clottey. Pacquiao has a respectable punch but he isn’t a heavy hitter, if he was a heavy puncher, it is probable that some of these drained fighters could be resting in the cemetery or a nursing home right now. To understand this, consider an experiment, refrain from food and water for twenty four hours, sit in a chair and then suddenly get up. The average person will feel dizzy; his legs will feel like crumbling under him. Now add to this experiment a punch in the face, and you can appreciate how dangerous this is.
How long before someone dies because of catch weight fights that force one man to drain himself dangerously, while the other fighter is as strong as a bull? A human body drained of vital nutrients and water can easily go into shock when punished severely. The result is coma and death. It is time for those supposed leaders of the boxing world to stand up and denounce this practice of catch weights requiring the draining of fighters, before someone is killed. It needs to be stopped.
A better practice is to weigh fighters progressively before a fight to insure that big fighters are not using weight manipulation to fight smaller fighters, and to insure that other fighters are not draining themselves dangerously; the last official weigh-in should be six hours before a fight. This would insure fairness in fights and prevent deaths.
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