Association of Boxing Commissions to vote on second-day weigh-ins for all title fights

The Association of Boxing Commissions will attempt to address the issue of dangerous weight-cutting practices by boxers during this week’s annual convention in Orlando, Florida.

A majority vote by ABC members on this new proposal would make it required that all fighters participating in sanctioned championship fights weigh-in on the morning of the fight and not weigh more than 10% over the contracted limit.

Should a fighter not be within this limit on the second day they would be ineligible to win the title with an additional possibility that they have to forfeit 10% of their purse, face suspension, and/or be removed from all rankings until they successfully make both weigh-ins in the future.

“We’re not asking for the moon — 10 percent is a big number,” Andy Foster, executive officer of the California State Athletic Commission, told ESPN. “If a fight is 147 pounds, for example, fighters have 14.7 pounds of rehydration to work with. The problem is that based on our data, we have a significant amount of fighters who are coming in more than that.”

Foster would continue by saying that they will also be looking to implement language that refers to extreme weight cutting as ‘cheating,’ saying it will never be specifically thought of as such until it receives that specific label. And so far it has been reported that the major sanctioning bodies, including the WBC, WBA, IBF, and WBO have all expressed support for this new proposal.

The IBF, specifically, already has this second-day weigh-in measure in place, but they recently waived that requirement for all unification fights involving other sanctioning bodies. However If this new proposal passes it would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2019 for all title fights.