It seems like almost every event the UFC puts on these days someone is struggling with weight-cutting issues, often leading to bouts being scrapped at the last minute, but while some people believe that adding more divisions could help alleviate the problem, Dana White has made it clear he’s not one of them.
“People are like, ‘Add weight classes, do this, do that,” White stated on TSN earlier this week. “It’s never going to change. You’re still going to have people trying to – let’s say I add a 165-pound weight class. That will only mean bigger guys will try to make 165. Everybody’s always looking for an advantage.”
Instead, White believes that it’s down to the fighters themselves to tackle their weight-cut in the right manner, using all the resources available to them to make their divisional limits without taking an unneccessary toll on their bodies.
“There’s ways to cut weight,” White said. “There’s safe ways. There’s scientific ways. Nutritionists can help you do this. Everybody just wants to take shortcuts and the easy way. But there is no easy way when you’re cutting weight.”
All fighters on the UFC roster have the option of using the UFC’s own Performance Institute and the in-house experts to help them in this regard, but of course that’s only applicable to those who are able to make their way to Las Vegas.
Outside of that, White says that the UFC is also taking a more active role in monitoring fighters during the weight-cutting process.
“What we’ve been doing is Jeff Novitzky, the guy we hired who handles all the (U.S. Anti-Doping Agency) stuff, he’s tracking all these guys’ weights. He tracks them. When you come in the week of the fight we find out where you are compared to where you were the last couple times you fought.”
By itself that’s not going to fix the issue though, so as things stand it doesn’t look as if the problems with fighters missing weight are going to fade away any time soon.
