Dana White: If You Can’t Make Weight Don’t Take The Fight

After the recent tragedy involving 26 year old Brazilian MMA fighter Leandro Souza, the issue of huge weight cuts have become part of the ever growing MMA debate for fans. It seems that the issue may be becoming more prominent in the minds of promoters and fighters. 

In this case, Dana White and Anderson Silva give their two cents about dramatic weight cuts. Check out what Silva had to say at the Rio De Janeiro stop of the UFC world tour:

“I have proper nutrition. I have a lot of time to make weight . When I get to the fight, I always get there four or five kilos above (nine to 11 pounds), at the most, and I can lose that weight very easily. I don’t wait to lose weight on the last minute.”

Besides sapping your hydration and energy levels, weight cutting in a very short window can cause major damage to the bodies organs. Just ask Daniel Cormier.

“I think the biggest problem is for athletes to accept fights at the last minute and wait to cut weight in the last minute,” he added. “No one can do that. There is no way you can recover your weight from one day to the next.”

Silva is quite right about that, fighters shouldn’t be accepting short notice fights when they are 20 kilos overweight; but the opportunity to fight in the biggest MMA stages doesn’t come around very often. When it does, it’s no wonder that guys would risk so much.

They are fighters after all, and they are willing to put their lives on the line to fight. The line should be drawn to in the cage, the dangers of weight cutting are severely outweighing the perils of weight cutting at present. UFC prez Dana White then chimed in:

“Where you see the dangerous situations are the guys that take last-minute fights and have to lose a ton of weight. It’s never good, In the UFC, these guys have plenty of time. They know when they have to fight. They know the time they have. They diet and do the proper nutrition to get down the right way. When they get closer (to weigh-ins), they cut a few pounds. That’s the healthy, normal way to do it.”

“I don’t think that the cutting weight process is ever going to be perfect, but I said it today in an interview I did with a gentleman earlier, I don’t care what level you fight on, no fight is worth dying over.”

This is a message that needs to be broadcast loud and clear, I personally don’t want this to become a problem that threatens the sport of MMA. It doesn’t take much to start a witch hunt now days, and weight related deaths would be a huge advantage for the narrow minded assholes politicians who see MMA as some sort of evil cult.

This is only the secondary reason, behind the quite obvious fact that it is a deadly gamble. Hopefully we see and end to this grim subject soon. White had some final words on the subject:

“If you can’t make the weight, don’t take the fight.”