#1 Worst: Weight-cutting issues raise their head again
A documentary was screened in the UK last week profiling Bellator’s Dean Garnett and his weight cut for a fight at Bellator 158 last year. As someone who’s never cut weight before, to me, the process looked scary and downright dangerous.
It’s quite telling that in the same week, we had Ian Entwistle have to drop out of his fight last night with Brett Johns due to implications from his weight cut. Entwistle missed weight by four pounds and was deemed incapable to fight just hours before the show.
It wasn’t the only fight cancelled on late notice – Tom Breese vs. Oluwale Bamgbose was also scrapped, but Breese’s issues apparently aren’t anything to do with weight cutting.
Entwistle has since announced his retirement on Facebook, outright stating that weight cutting has given him some serious health issues that he needs to fix.
The documentary detailed the issues that weight cutting can cause with the liver and the kidneys and mentioned that fighters have died due to bad cuts recently, albeit not in the UFC or Bellator.
How close Entwistle was to becoming the first we don’t know. Thankfully, the worst case scenario didn’t happen, but how long will it be before it does?
For me, someone needs to start properly regulating weight cutting as soon as possible to avoid the inevitable tragedy that could occur at any time.
