Photo Credit: Scott Hirano (@ScottHirano)

In combat sports like wrestling, boxing and specially MMA, weight cutting is as common as training any martial arts discipline.

For fans, making weight it’s just someone losing a few pounds and staying below the ranges of a weight division, for fighters though, it represents losing large amounts of weight, mostly through aggressively dehydrating oneself, over the course of about a week.

Cutting weight is a skill unto itself and is part of the job for professional fighters. Recently, one of Combate Americas’ fighters went through the whole process and we capture essence of this process in a few images to show you how hard these warriors work every day to make a living out of the sport.

Pablo “El Gallo” Sabori, 26, will be facing Anthony “The Shark” Ávila in the main event of Combate Fresno, this bout will take place tomorrow February 22 at the Save Mart Center en Fresno, California and will be live on television in Spanish in the U.S. on both Univision (12 a.m. ET/PT) and UDN (12 a.m. ET/9 p.m.PT), and in English in the U.S. and Canada on DAZN (10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT).

HOW WEIGHT CUT WORKS?

Like we said, cutting weight is the practice of rapid weight loss prior to competition. The goal here is to lose the weight temporally just to meet the threshold of the weight class and then, after the weigh-ins, massively rehydrate in usually a 24-hour window before the fight.

WHY FIGHTERS CUT WEIGHT?

The weight cutting process is one of the most difficult things to achieve; but why fighters do it?  A professional fighter can lose certain amounts of pounds, depending on the weight cutting technique. This means that an athlete could show up and enter La Jaula on fight night, with several pounds over the agreed weight. By doing this, the fighter gains a maximum size advantage over his opponent.

WHY DEHYDRATATION?

Since your body is made mostly of water, it is easier to get rid of the water instead of muscle. As mentioned before effectively cutting weight is a skill. There are many techniques used to cut weight, the most common techniques include exercise while wearing a sauna suite, sitting in a sauna, salt baths, laxatives, diuretics, and decreased water intake.

Mission accomplished

 

THE FIGHT OUTSIDE THE CAGE

Cutting weight to take advantage of your body is a process, and by process we mean that you need to follow rules, use techniques, and diet to achieve your goal. That being said, the important thing isn’t how heavy you can get, it’s making it without suffering or injuring yourself in the process, that is why is called: the fight outside the cage.

The fighter who masters how to effectively cut weight will always have half of the fight in his pocket.