Kevin Lee said what others might have been thinking about the way weight cuts are going. Fighters are struggling to make their weight class limit and some are ending up in the hospital from the strain on their bodies. Even Dana White is attempting to address the solution and has made his case for weigh-ins to take place the evening before the event.
Here’s some of what Lee told The MMA Hour yesterday (via BJPenn.com).
Everybody knows that this weight-cutting thing is a problem, but nobody is coming up with no f*cking solutions. Everybody is kind of waiting for somebody to die. And I don’t feel like that’s the right thing to do. I think you have to take at least one step in the right direction and then just see how it goes. There’s really no downside to it.
The discussions of more weight classes has come up in UFC circles and Lee seems to support it because it allows for more fighters to safely make the limits.
Most people, especially 155ers that I talk to, they all want it. We all are about the same size. A lot of these [lightweights] are [185, 190]. … We’re all doing the same thing to compete against each other. It doesn’t make sense. If we can make it a little bit safer and we can make it a little bit more fair, that’s all I’m calling for [a 165-pound weight class]. Just a fair, even playing field for me to go out there and compete with somebody without having to kill myself to do it.
There’s so many guys, there’s so much talent [in the lightweight and welterweight divisions]. The talent is there. It’s the same thing they said about adding 125 for the women. Yeah, it’s gonna take some time to cultivate that, but I think it’s gonna even be easier, because you have so many guys in between these weight classes right now that could fill that up. Where it’s at is the talent is always gonna show up.