Weight cutting in MMA has been a problem for decades. Joe Rogan, for one, wants to see a significant rule change in the UFC to eliminate it for good.
The longtime UFC color commentator has talked about this problem frequently and did so yet again while speaking with former light heavyweight champion Jiří Procházka on his podcast.
He sees the dangers it causes to fighters’ bodies. Rogan said he’d prefer the UFC to implement more weight classes to prevent significant cuts, an idea he pitched to Ari Emanuel when Endeavor bought the promotion’s parent company, Zuffa.
“I think weight cutting should be eliminated,” Rogan said on The Joe Rogan Experience. “I said this to Ari Emanuel when they first bought the UFC. I said, ‘Listen, man, you know what we should do? Get rid of weight cutting. Just stop it.’ Look, if you can randomly test people for drugs, you can randomly test their weight.
“Show up with a scale. ‘Hey, buddy, step on the scale. You’re 190 pounds? How the f*ck are you making 145?’ Do something like that and come up with more weight classes. There should be a weight class every 10 pounds. This idea of these giant gaps like 185 to 205, that’s a 20-pound gap. That’s huge. That doesn’t exist in boxing. They should have every 10 pounds: 85, 95, 205, 225, and then unlimited.”
Rogan believes that it should be where the weight cuts are catered around the UFC champions and what they walk around at. That would eliminate wild cuts where fighters lose dozens of pounds.
“Instead of having weight cuts, just take the champions, find out what the champion weighs – like don’t get rid of the championship belts,” Rogan said. “Find out what does Islam Makhachev weigh. Islam Makhachev is a UFC champion, best pound-for-pound fighter on Earth. Find out what he weighs.
“What do you weigh if you were healthy, if weight cutting didn’t exist? Would it be 185, 190? Whatever that is, that’s how you fight now, and we’re not going to weigh you in the day before and let you rehydrate. That’s crazy talk. Fight people your size. The fights would be better because too many people get depleted horribly.”
