Weight Cutting Is Dumb And Stupid And Everyone Looked Sick As Hell This Morning Because Of It

UFC 218 takes place tomorrow live from Detroit, Michigan, and weigh-ins were this morning. Everyone made weight, but it looked tougher for some than others. The two that were visibly the most drained were the two in the main event for the UFC Featherweight Championship: Max Holloway and Jose Aldo.

Max looked like a skeleton. Like Christian Bale in The Machinist. His cheekbones were poppin’ out of his face like Conor McGregor’s used to. Granted, he’s a VERY skinny guy even when he’s not making the cut to 145lbs, but jesus man, that’s simply not healthy. I don’t care how many nutritionists are behind it.

Jose Aldo, on the other hand, missed weight initially, and came back with the towel to hit 145 on the dot. He also looked like he was going to die on the scale.

That’s a guy locked and loaded for a bad case of CTE tomorrow night. If you didn’t know, cutting such a drastic amount of weight and dehydrating your body like such isn’t just dangerous as it’s going on. It has lasting effects that make you way more susceptible to being knocked out within a few days. The UFC has pretty much refused to do anything about this since taking IV’s away a couple years ago, and that is unacceptable. People are dying. Maybe not in the UFC, but it’s only a matter of time until it does happen in the company at this point.

Hydration testing is the only way around it, making sure people are within the same weight class year round, but it would require all champions be stripped of their titles and include a complete reset of everything, and they’re DEFINITELY not interested in doing that right now. Now is the time to do it, though, on the slight down-year they’re having. Don’t wait till new stars are actually building through title wins and whatnot, THEN do it. But just do something, at any and all cost.