Ups and downs: Boxers play dangerous weighting game in days before fights
Moments before Thursday’s weighin at the Ricoh Coliseum, as fighters and their entourages milled around, Chris Johnson and Antonio Tarver stood off to the side and shared a quick conversation before slapping hands, smiling and stepping away.
It was their first face-to-face meeting since August 2001, when the men were both light-heavyweight contenders squaring off in an ESPN main event. The bout ended with Tarver pummeling Johnson into unconsciousness. Johnson spent a week in the hospital afterward and would never compete again.
Johnson, who trains a fighter on the undercard of Friday’s world title fight, doesn’t blame Tarver for his careerending brain injury.
He blames dehydration, which the Mississauga resident says sapped his energy late in a competitive bout and left him vulnerable to brain trauma.
While researchers are still working to determine if dehydration and brain injuries are linked, every fighter who weighed in Thursday took fluid replacement seriously, each with a preferred way of re-hydrating after shedding water to make weight.
Headliner Adonis Stevenson stepped off the scale and downed a bottle of water. And as he left the stage his trainer, Javan (Sugar) Hill hustled over with a duffel bag and produced several cartons of coconut water.
“I feel good. Great. A lot of energy,” said Stevenson, who is 26-1 with 21 knockouts. “I don’t have problems with the weigh-in because I used to fight at 168 pounds. Now I fight at 175, so it’s easy for me.”
Hydration and athlete safety have made big news in recent weeks.
World welterweight champ Floyd Mayweather spent Thursday responding to allegations that he broke doping rules when using an IV to regain water weight after weighing in for his May 2 showdown with Manny Pacquiao.
And last month Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson drew blistering criticism when he claimed a sports drink he endorses can prevent and heal concussions.
Those methods are too convoluted for Tommy Karpency, who will challenge for Stevenson’s WBC lightheavyweight belt Friday night. After a weigh-in Karpency consumes Pedialyte, yogurt and bananas.
“The Pedialyte is engineered to hydrate you, so you feel better right away,” he said. “You can eat some solid food maybe 15 or 20 minutes later.”
Karpency weighed in at 174.6 pounds Thursday, while Stevenson weighed the light-heavyweight limit of 175 pounds. Each man expects to gain about 10 pounds between now and the fight, most of it fluid lost in the final stages of weight-cutting.
That figure is pretty conservative for many combat sports athletes.
When Victor Ortiz challenged for Mayweather’s title in 2011 he weighed in at 147 pounds then gained 17 pounds over the next day, entering the ring at 164. Ultimate Fighting Championship star Georges St-Pierre would routinely lose more than 20 pounds in the week before weigh-ins, then gain most of it back overnight.
Errol Spence, who fights in Friday’s co-feature, weighs about 160 pounds in his everyday life, then diets down to 152 as fight night approaches. He sweats out the final few pounds in the sauna to make the 147-pound welterweight limit.
As soon as makes weight, it’s Pedialyte, water and coconut water.
“That’s not your natural weight you’re going down to,” says the 25year-old Houston native. “Of course you’re thirsty, and if you do it at the last minute you’ll be weak. If you do it a week or two before the fight you’ll be a lot stronger.” Morgan Campbell