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Travis Lutter fails to make weight.
By Luke | February 2, 2007
According to f4wonline.com, Travis Lutter has failed to make weight for his Middleweight Title match against Anderson Silva. The fight will now be three rounds, and won’t be for the MW Championship. The fallout here.
This is stunning. One would think that with a few months worth of notice that the fight was happening, he would’ve been able to diet down to 185, or a little below that in time for his fight.
If you’re a PROFESSIONAL~! fighter, and its your job to fight, and you’re in the main event on a PPV that will be watched by more than a million total viewers. It is incredibly irresponsible to fail to make weight.
Topics: All Topics, Luke Nicholson, MMA, UFC | 19 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
What is worse?
1. Travis Lutter not making weight, despite making the weight on 3 occasions for TUF4.
2. The UFC’s handling of the weight issue. They don’t even have a headline on their website about it. You have to read the text of an article to discover this.
3. The fan who bought the ticket expecting to see 2 UFC Title fights, and now gets none.
4. The beating Anderson silva is going to put on a physically and mentally drained Travis Lutter tomorrow.
What can we say, s–t happens. We don’t what was going on in Lutter’s personal life which may have sidetracked him away from his cardio, training, or diet regiment. Only he and those close to him knows. If Lutter ever wants to fight for the UFC again after tomorrow, he better do something extraordinary and magnificant in his fight. I just want to have fun watching the show I paid $40 for. Who doesn’t?
“The UFC’s handling of the weight issue. They don’t even have a headline on their website about it. You have to read the text of an article to discover this.”
Nay, the lead text below the headline of the top story says straight up that Lutter didn’t make the limit.
Hopefully Mirko will only use his right hand in the first round to make his fight more competitive and last longer..
This highlights the issue of weight cutting in weight division sports, mma in particular. Why can’t all fighters just fight at their weight? If Lutter weighs 210 pounds, then fight at HW. Or, make a concerted effort to weigh 205 pounds on a regular basis, and then fight at LHW. The only coherent reason I’ve ever gotten for having weigh ins the day before a fight is for the publicity. Well fine, have a weigh in the day before for the press and photo shoots, whatever you want. But have a scale ringside and the fighter must still weigh that weight. If they couldn’t get away with it anymore, they wouldn’t do it, fighters aren’t stupid.
Hopefully this and the stricter rules in Ohio for the next one will open some more eyes.
Until then: Lutter is screwed unless he can pull off a win, and well good riddance.
This doesn’t really affect my expectations for the show at all. In fact, I look more forward to it know, knowing we are guaranteed to have one more fight sheduled to air on PPV with this being cut to 3. However, looking objectively at things, an awful card just went completely down the crapper.
Kyle,
How exactly do they implement that? What is a fighters natural weight? A fighter, depending on training and various other things, can have a natural weight that fluctuates over 15 pounds, and this all happening within 3 months of the fight.
And the day before weigh-ins have nothing to do with publicity. There is actually a medical reason for it. If fighters cut even small amounts of water weight, they will be slightly dehydrated. A brain with less water that get’s KO’d is more likely to have worse brain damage. That is one of the major factors for day before weigh ins.
Not to mention that weighing fights at ringside creates many more problems. What if a fighter is over weight by 2 pounds then? What do they do? Do they negotiate whether to have the fight take place? What if the opponent (who made weight) is already in the octagon and hears this news. And what if he elects not to fight because of a major weight difference. do you know how much it would KILL his career because he walked away from a fight. He should be able to, but public perception is a bitch.
This is why the current system is better then anything you just suggested.
I think the biggest question with significant weight problems (3+ lbs. above the weight limit the day of the weigh in) is whether or not the guy knows he’s not going to make weight. Most fighters probably wouldn’t mind not having to cut as much weight and fight at a catch weight if they were given advanced notice that the opponent can’t reach the weight limit for the bout. After all, cutting all that weight does have a serious effect on the fighter’s body over their lifetime and the longer you do it, the harder it becomes to reach the lower weights you were at.
The only way to make guys fight at their natural weight is to weigh them on fight night right before they fight. The danger in that is guys will still cut weight and will enter fights with less cerebrospinal fluid, the saline like solution that keeps our brains in place in our skulls. This will lead to more concussions of greater severity.
The other option is to have less weight classes and really spread them out. 150, 180, 205, HW. You would still get guys that should be in 205 trying to sneak into 180, etc. Weight cutting in a weight sport is unavoidable.
If you notice, not all of the fighters do crazy weight cutting.
Mirko Filipovis should be a Light Heavyweight, and makes no attempts to cut weight.
Matt Lindland is fighting at Heavyweight & Light Heavyweight. And he could probably make 170 lbs, as he did so for the Olympics, and has even said if he had a fight with Matt Hughes, he would drop down.
BJ Penn is a small Welterweight.
Anderson Silva made 175 lbs within the last 18 months for a tournament. He isn’t exactly a big Middleweight.
So a lot of elite athletes don’t go crazy with weight cutting. However, there are many who do, and a lot of times, it ends up hurting them for a fight, where they are too weak.
I’m not really sure what your point is. We were discussing the people that DO cut large amounts of weight and end up missing weight or putting on poor performances (Joe Riggs) because they are drained. If everyone were like the guys you mentioned there would be no issue. There would also probably be less boxing deaths.
“Hopefully this and the stricter rules in Ohio for the next one will open some more eyes.”
Ohio waved that rule for the UFC. Weird.
Dear Ohio,
We will be bringing a sold out crowd to the Nationwide Arena. Ticket prices will be as high as $400. The Arena and surrounding area will prosper the night of our event, and help the many small businesses of the local community. We ask nicely for you to make a little chance to the rules. Please adhere to the NSAC’s standards of weight-ins. We appreciate the support.
Sincerely,
Where The Money Flows
Fighters who cut 30 pounds are a lot more common than one would think. It is very unhealthy (as is cutting 15 or 20 pounds, for that matter).
Still, nothing is ever going to done about it unless the athletic commissions force something to be done about it. I’m not talking about boxing and MMA, not just the UFC or even MMA as a whole.
They waived the rule for UFC 68 because it’s the UFC. Same thing happens with WWE in certain states where the athletic commission has certain things that are banned even on pro wrestling events (ie, blading, use of chairs as weapons, man-on-woman violence, etc). In some cases, WWE actually pays the fines in advance for things that any other promotion would have to adhere to. With UFC 68, they’re not even going to have to do that; the Ohio commission simply waived the rule.
You’d think that athletic commissions would be above things like that, but most aren’t. Witness the California State Athletic Commission throwing around suspensions like they’re going out of style for all kinds of things (wearing a t-shirt, doing a cartwheel, protesting a stoppage, being too old, whatever they suspended Vernon White for, etc) and doing nothing of the sort for UFC events.
Can you imagine what would happen if Lutter pulled off the upset? The rematch would be huge!
But then what would happen if Lutter failed to make weight for the rematch and Silva was all pissed off about it but then Silva failed to make weight for his own next fight so he would be stripped of the title but he would lose anyway to Joel Casamayor. Oh wait, that’s Corrales vs. Castillo. lol. Also, Jeff, I wish you would update your web site more, I used to love reading it.
I have tickets to the
UFC 68 event being held on March 3, 2007 and I’m wondering if they are having the weight-in’s the night before at the arena? If so can I attend with my ticket or do I need to purchase an additional ticket? Please get back with me and let me know if you have any information at all concerning this.
Thank you,
Scott
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