Yeah, this happens all the time in MMA and some people think it is stupid actually. The original point was why would you fight someone who is bigger and stronger than you and heavier versus someone who might be 30 to 50 pounds less. But obviously, you would have to cut the weight to be able to fight that person to be in the same weight class…. It’s usually super brutal and hard to cut the weight so quickly. So people sweat out and dehydrate themselves to drop the extra pounds to make the weight class…
Supposedly back in the day they would weigh you like the day of I think? So it was more fair. But obviously you don’t wanna be dehydrated before a fight so people tend to gain weight back. LOL.
Overall people see it as unethical to fight someone that is smaller or bigger than you, so they do their best to keep people in the same weight class.
The organizations want to make it kinda fair and the fighters want the advantage. I think there is a rule for mma at least that you can’t put more than 10 lbs from your weigh in weight. So basically orgs require it for a semblance of fairness and fighters want it for advantage coz you can play at a much heavier weight (an advantage in mma since you are harder to take down) than your opponent if you are fighting a weight class lighter than you. It’s actually very dangerous for the health but it is what it is. It’s up to the orgs.
thank you for the kind response and insight!
i see! thanks for the response
i don’t know how accurate this is, so if anyone here watched MMA or fighting of some kind can you explain: why would jaekyung have to go through all that work to drop weight for the weigh-in when he can weigh more for the actual fight anyway? they aren’t gonna weigh him the day of the match to make sure he’s in the new weight class??