By Mark Hepplestall: I recently seen an article that suggested putting a body fat limit on the heavyweight division due to the amount of boxers that are visibly overweight, and this is a follow on from that particular article. The idea of a body fat cut off is a great idea and has been starring the world in the face. Firstly this cannot be seen as discrimination as its more protecting the overweight, and evidently unprepared boxers from being hurt.

The idea of this would be to take the body fat percentage of all the boxers before a fight and any body fat percentage from 1 – 15% would be fine, whereas boxers with body fat from 15 – 20% would be severely fined after the bout, possibly taking 20% of their boxing purse and giving it to weight related charities? Any boxers that have a body fat percentage over 20% will have their fight called off due to the worker/boxer turning up unprepared to work/box; obviously they will not be getting paid if this is the case.

Firstly I think the ideas that are set out are fair as for athletes, which boxers are, they shouldn’t have body fat over 10%, so 12% is more than fair. There are serious problems is they are above 15% and surely 20% is visibly overweight and will surely reduce their ability to fight at the top level.

The whole division would be shook up, people such as Chris Arreola who is the face of the problem would be forced to take some time out of the sport and lose at least 1 stone or more in fat. This is a guy who admits that he has the worst diet, eating the wrong things and training, it seems obvious that he keeps getting injuries as his body just cannot cope with a high velocity workout and high calorie diet that is packed full of the empty calories and lack of nutrients such as the beers and fast foods he eats, which is awful when compared to the Spartan lifestyle employed by true champions such as the Klitschko’s.

Maybe an example of how things could change would be the difference between David Haye and Odlander Solis. Solis destroyed Haye in the armatures when they met a super middleweight. Haye was beat to the punch, the skills were unbelievable from Solis and he was in great shape. Now look at them both in heavyweight, Haye carries the extra weight very well, he holds it in muscle mass whereas Solis holds it in Fat that he cannot do anything with. Since the amateur days Solis has lost speed, he doesn’t even look as good as usual when looking at his last bout with Austin. Hate Haye or Love him he is in great shape, he has great speed and his movement is good, he spends £1000 per week on fresh food when in training and it honestly shows.

This may be the best idea to make the Heavyweight scene more competitive, hopefully the boxing boards will look into this and possibly employ it.