As previously discussed, rapid extreme weight cut practices are a largely unregulated part of combat sports. These practices come with inherent dangers. To date, State and Provincial Athletic Commissions have been largely content to turn a blind eye to this problem with few regulated thresholds addressing these practices.
Recently TopMMANews documented two further examples of the harm caused by these practices. On June 16 it was reported that
“Hopefully Jordan Murray is feeling much better. Jordan had to have emergency surgery on his gallbladder. Here’s what he had to say… “All my weight cutting has finally caught up to me I guess, looks like I have to remove my gallbladder after spending all day in emergency and losing alot of blood the Doctor says its 100% from cutting weight, crazy!”
This week TopMMANews reports another near tragedy noting as follows:
“Scary incident for Jer Kornelsen cutting weight for his BFL fight. Here’s what he had to say… “So I passed out and stopped breathing in the sauna trying to make weight. I guess they did CPR on me for a while and I came too in the hospital.. Seriously pissed off and feel horrible. Sorry to my team, Battlefield and mostly my opponent!”
If these practices continue there is a tragedy waiting to happen in MMA and when it does the aftermath will land squarely at the feet of the Athletic Commission overseeing the event at question. Athletic Commissions exist first and foremost for athlete safety. When a practice develops that is clearly endangering the sports participants Athletic Commissions enter the realm of negligence if they fail to address the situation. Hopefully commissions are prepared to take note and remember that weight classes exist to protect fighters, not to encourage practices which endanger their health and well being.
Combat Sports Law 
We need more Mike Dolce’s to help fighters to prevent stuff like this from happening
Athletes only lose so much weight now because it’s physically possible to get the water back in
their system until the next day. As far as I know, even the slightest dehydration lowers your performance level a huge amount, so nobody wants that. If there were weigh-ins the same day, it would be completely impossible to cut dangerously much and still being able to perform well, and athletes would be forced to focus on reaching a stable and approved match weight.