The information in this article is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Weight cutting as practiced by professional fighters is dangerous and has resulted in hospitalizations and deaths. Do not attempt extreme weight cutting without medical supervision.
Every fighter has a weight cutting story. The sauna at 2am. The trash bags under the sweats. The Albolene slathered on like war paint. Spitting into a bottle for hours. Stepping on the scale completely depleted and somehow making weight with ounces to spare. Then rehydrating, eating, and walking into the ring 15-20 pounds heavier than what the scale said 24 hours earlier.
Weight cutting is the dark art of professional fighting. It’s miserable, it’s unhealthy, and every fighter does it. Understanding how it works is part of understanding the sport. But this article comes with a clear warning — this is an explanation, not a recommendation. Extreme weight cutting has killed fighters. It has caused organ failure, seizures, and permanent damage. If you’re training for fitness, this is not for you.
What Weight Cutting Actually Is
Weight cutting is not weight loss. Weight loss is a gradual reduction of body fat over weeks or months through diet and exercise. Weight cutting is the rapid elimination of water weight in the days and hours before a weigh-in, followed by aggressive rehydration before the fight.
A fighter who competes at 154 pounds might walk around at 170-175. In the week before the fight, they’ll cut 15-20 pounds of water weight to make the scale. After weigh-in, they’ll put most of it back on through IV fluids, oral rehydration solutions, and food. By fight night, they’re back near their natural weight — fighting against an opponent who did the exact same thing.
The advantage is size. If you can make 154 on the scale and rehydrate to 170 by fight time, you’re bigger, stronger, and heavier than a natural 154-pounder. Everyone does it, so not doing it puts you at a size disadvantage.
It’s a terrible system. Everyone in boxing knows it. And it’s not going anywhere.
The Tools Fighters Use
Albolene
The secret weapon of the weight cut. Albolene is a moisturizing cleanser — yes, a skincare product — that fighters have been using for decades to accelerate water loss through the skin.
How it works: You apply a thick layer of Albolene to your skin — chest, stomach, arms, thighs, neck — then put on a sauna suit or heavy sweats and exercise or sit in a sauna. The Albolene creates an occlusive barrier on the skin that traps heat and promotes excessive sweating. The idea is that it makes you sweat more, faster, than you would without it.
Does it actually work? Fighters swear by it. The science on Albolene specifically is thin — there aren’t clinical trials on using moisturizing cleanser for dehydration. What is established is that occlusive barriers on the skin do increase localized heat and sweat production. Whether Albolene produces significantly more water loss than simply wearing a sauna suit alone is debatable. But ask any fighter who’s ever had to cut weight and they’ll tell you Albolene is non-negotiable.
Where to buy it: Any pharmacy. It’s in the skincare aisle. A jar costs about $15. It’s been on shelves for over 100 years and the company probably has no idea that its primary customer base is professional fighters trying to make weight.
Sauna Suits
Plastic or nylon suits designed to trap body heat and maximize sweat production during exercise. Fighters wear them while running, shadow boxing, or doing light exercise in the final hours before weigh-in.
How they work: The suit prevents your sweat from evaporating, which eliminates your body’s natural cooling mechanism. Your core temperature rises, your body produces even more sweat to try to cool down, and you lose water weight rapidly.
The risk: This is genuinely dangerous. Exercising in a sauna suit can cause core body temperature to reach dangerous levels. Heat stroke, cardiac events, and kidney failure are real risks. Fighters who cut too much weight too fast in sauna suits have died. This is not an exaggeration.
What Title sells: Title Boxing sells sauna suits in their conditioning section. They’re a standard piece of fight equipment. Every boxing equipment retailer carries them. They’re effective tools when used with medical oversight and dangerous when used recklessly.
The Hot Bath / Epsom Salt Bath
Some fighters use hot baths with Epsom salts as part of their cut. The hot water raises core temperature and promotes sweating even while sitting still. Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) are believed to draw additional water through the skin through osmosis, though the evidence for this mechanism is limited.
How fighters use it: Sit in a hot bath (as hot as tolerable) for 10-15 minutes, get out and wrap in towels, let the body continue sweating, repeat. Some fighters add Albolene before getting in the bath.
Water Loading and Manipulation
The most scientifically grounded part of the weight cut. In the week before weigh-in, fighters manipulate their water intake to trick their body into flushing more water than it’s taking in.
The protocol (general version):
- 7 days out: Drink 2 gallons of water per day
- 6 days out: 2 gallons
- 5 days out: 2 gallons
- 4 days out: 1 gallon
- 3 days out: Half gallon
- 2 days out: Sipping only
- 1 day out (weigh-in day): Nothing or minimal sips
How it works: When you drink 2 gallons a day, your body upregulates its water excretion mechanisms — your kidneys are flushing water constantly. When you suddenly cut water intake, the body continues flushing at the same rate for a period, causing you to lose significant water weight even though you’re no longer drinking. Combined with sodium manipulation (loading sodium early, cutting it later), this can produce 8-12 pounds of water loss before any sauna or exercise-based cutting begins.
Spitting
Sounds absurd. It’s real. In the final hours before weigh-in, when every ounce matters, fighters will carry a bottle and spit into it continuously. Saliva is water. Over several hours of constant spitting, a fighter can lose a pound or more. Some use sour candies or lemon to stimulate saliva production.
This is what “making weight” looks like in the final hours. It’s not glamorous.
The Rehydration
After weigh-in, the process reverses immediately. Fighters have roughly 24-30 hours (depending on the promotion or commission rules) to put back everything they took off.
IV fluids: Some commissions allow IV rehydration. A liter or two of saline solution goes directly into the bloodstream and rehydrates faster than oral intake. Some commissions have banned IVs, forcing oral rehydration only.
Oral rehydration solutions: Pedialyte, coconut water, electrolyte drinks. Fighters drink constantly in the hours after weigh-in. The goal is to restore fluid balance, replenish electrolytes, and get the body functioning normally again.
Food: Easily digestible, carbohydrate-heavy meals to restore glycogen. Rice, pasta, bananas, smoothies. Nothing heavy or hard to digest. The stomach has been empty and dehydrated — loading it with a steak dinner causes problems.
A well-executed rehydration can put 10-15 pounds back on a fighter overnight. A poorly executed one leaves a fighter depleted, weak, and vulnerable in the ring — which is when weight cutting goes from competitive tool to health hazard.
Why Regular People Should Never Do This
The weight cutting process is designed for one thing — making a number on a scale at a specific moment in time. It has nothing to do with fat loss, fitness, or health. Everything about it is temporary and destructive.
The weight comes back immediately. Every pound lost through water manipulation returns within 24-48 hours. You haven’t lost fat. You’ve dehydrated yourself. This is not a weight loss strategy.
It’s dangerous without medical oversight. Professional fighters cut weight under the supervision of coaches, nutritionists, and sometimes physicians who monitor their condition throughout the process. Even with that oversight, fighters end up in hospitals. Without it, the risks multiply.
It destroys performance. Dehydration impairs every physical function — strength, endurance, reaction time, cognitive function. If you’re cutting weight for a fitness competition, a photo shoot, or vanity, you’re making yourself weaker to look lighter. That’s the opposite of training.
It can cause lasting damage. Repeated extreme dehydration stresses the kidneys, the heart, and the brain. Fighters who cut weight aggressively over years of competition often report kidney issues later in life. Some have suffered acute kidney failure during a cut.
If you want to lose weight, eat in a calorie deficit, train consistently, and let your body composition change over weeks and months. That’s real weight loss. What fighters do before weigh-in is survival — not health.
The Conversation the Sport Needs to Have
Weight cutting is the most dangerous non-combat element of boxing and MMA. Fighters have died making weight. Many more have been hospitalized. The competitive incentive to cut as much as possible creates a race to the bottom where fighters push their bodies to increasingly extreme lengths.
Same-day weigh-ins (where fighters weigh in the day of the fight rather than the day before) would reduce extreme cutting because there’s no time to rehydrate. Some commissions and promotions have experimented with this. Others have added secondary weigh-ins on fight day to monitor rehydration limits.
The sport is slowly moving toward safer practices, but as long as there’s a competitive advantage to being bigger than your opponent at the same weight class, fighters will cut. Understanding how it works is part of understanding the sport. Respecting how dangerous it is should be part of that understanding too.
The Fighter’s Diet: How to Eat Clean Without Hating Your Life
Boxing for Weight Loss: Why It Works Better Than Almost Anything Else
Supplements 101: What You Actually Need and What’s a Waste of Money
Products Mentioned:
- Title Boxing Sauna Suits — Hooded and standard sauna suits.
- Albolene — Moisturizing cleanser used by fighters for weight cuts. Available at any pharmacy.
