The Dehydration Summit, hosted by California State Athletic Commission on Thursday, December 17, 2015 in Los Angeles offered incredible insight to the over 50 people in attendance. From top-tier fighters to coaches, from various tribal and state athletic Commissions, from promoters of all sizes to big name referees, from doctors to lawyers, fighter wellness representatives to fight inspectors, amateur sanctioning bodies to anti-doping organizations, all elements of combative sports events were present and contributed to the lengthy discussion. The State of California had prepared a comprehensive bound book of medical findings and numerous public articles describing the long-term damage and the immediate loss of performance significant de-hydration can have on a fighter, with the worst being death and the least severe being reduced performance in the competition. The focus was how to assist in improving a fighter’s performance and how to lessen the effects of severe dehydration and rapid re-hydration.
Included in the discussion was 1) why IV re-hydration after a steep weight cut gives a false sense of wellness to the fighters, 2) the possibility of opening more weight classes to help discourage severe weight cuts, 3) the placement of perhaps a 10% gain limit between advance weigh-in and day of weigh-in, 4) to whether or not increasing the number of hours (prior to the fight) that advance weigh-ins could occur. As with all regulations, individual Commissions can adopt policies for which they see fit prior to the ABC conference, but all such suggestions will be brought before the Association of Boxing Commission body before any such policies can be added into unified rules of the ABC.