Joe Rogan thinks he knows a way to reduce bad weight cutting for UFC fighters.
Fans suffered quite the scare when bantamweight Cameron Smotherman collapsed after successfully making weight for a planned bout with Ricky Turcios. Smotherman was able to avoid disaster, but his fight with Turcios was cancelled. While Smotherman insisted that he didn’t cut a lot of weight, the scary moment left many debating about weight-cutting in MMA.
During an edition of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the longtime UFC color commentator suggested more divisions as a way to avoid these issues (via MMAJunkie).
“I think for MMA, they really need to recognize this that one of the things that’s going to stop weight cuts is give people more weight classes, give people more options,” Rogan said. “This idea of only having eight champions in MMA is very, very limiting. … In MMA, if you win two belts, that’s crazy. That’s the only thing anybody’s ever done. The only people that have ever done it have done it in two weight classes.
“No one’s done it in three. (Alex) Pereira might try to do it at heavyweight because he’s walking around at like 240 which is crazy because he used to fight at 185. If they had more options, and they had more weight classes, I think we’d have more competitive fights, we’d have less extreme weight cutting, we’d have healthier fighters. Just more champions is better. There’s a lot of guys that could be champions, it’s just there’s not a weight class for them.”
In the past, Dana White hasn’t exactly been gung-ho over the idea of adding more weight classes. As the sport of MMA continues to evolve, perhaps the door could one day be open for more divisions in UFC.
He’s wrong. People would still get their end of camp weight to where they could cut 10% in water and make weight, it would do absolutely nothing.
Professional fighters aren’t between weight classes really. If they are they need to move their lean mass one way or the other and make themselves the right size for their weight class.
Joe doesn’t get it. His idea to make a 195 and cruiserweight classes are stupid too.
I was thinking like WTF , Atom Weight ? Super Super HW ?
Just get rid of weigh-ins and make people fight at their natural, in-shape weight.
It’s easy enough to establish with camp visits.
On a basketball court?
The only weight class they need is to change the Heavyweight limit and add a Superheavyweight.
205-265 is a huge spread.
I’m surprised the ufc hasn’t done it just because it means more title fights to headline cards.
Would likely eliminate some of the interim stuff that goes on.l when multiple champs are out and they need to be able to pump up events.
Between 170 and 265 it’s very easy to add 2 more divisions.