You Might Be a Fighter If ...

(Part Two)

An excerpt from "The Iceman Diaries"

by

"ICEMAN' JOHN SCULLY

"Iceman" John Scully with Muhammad Ali

Weight loss – last minute and long term – is a struggle that every boxer, amateur and pro, knows.

Learning the newest and craziest methods of losing extra pounds at the last minute was imperative to my boxing career as both an amateur and as a professional. I can't even tell you how many times I have been less than 24 hours away from a weigh-in and still found myself so many pounds over the contracted weight that I needed to be.

I have seen many discussions over the years about weight loss and too many times there are people weighing in on the subject who have never had to go through the trial of it all.

People say, for example, that because Arturo Gatti used to sometimes weigh in at over 160 pounds between fights that he shouldn't have been allowed to get himself back to 140 to fight because he was putting opponents in that class at too big of a disadvantage when he got there. Well, Bernard Hopkins used to walk around at roughly the same weight between fights that Gatti did but B-Hop could never in a million years get himself down to 140 like Arturo could. Gatti weighed 160 at times but he was not a middleweight. So he had to go through the struggle to get himself to his fighting weight. It's just the way it is.

I used to walk around sometimes at over 190 pounds but there was just no way possible for me to fight at that weight. I was, at best, a light heavyweight. When I fought for the IBF 175-pound title in Germany back in 1996 against Henry Maske it was literally a thing where the only time I weighed the contracted 175 pounds was for a few minutes at the official weigh-in the day before the fight. I was actually in the bathroom as the weigh-in started that day spitting into the sink trying to lose those last few ounces so I could make the weight. Then I stepped on the scale and made it. Drank some water right afterwards and instantly was back up towards 180.

So over a several-month span before and after my light heavyweight title fight there was literally a span of less than five minutes that saw me actually weigh 175 pounds, but I had no choice because despite what the scale said I was NOT a cruiserweight. It's just the way it is for some fighters.

I have many examples of the struggle guys like us go through and every boxer on earth who considers a jar of Albolene and a rubber suit a close personal friend will likely recognize them all to well.

1. You might be a fighter...if you have spent several mornings, noons and nights in a row worrying if you will somehow, "be able to lose nine more pounds by the weigh-in this Friday."

2. You might also be a fighter if...you can name more than a few unusual (and usually very harmful) methods you've tried in regard to losing weight for a fight. Sometimes it is for long-term weight loss but more often than not it is something you need to do on a few days (and in some cases a few hours) notice.

Sometimes on a hot day I would roll the windows up in my car and keep the air conditioner off so that I would sweat like crazy as I drove around town. It was like a portable sauna on wheels. I never did this one but I have heard about guys even sleeping in a hot bedroom (windows closed, no air conditioner) while wearing a rubber suit. Sitting in a steam room or sauna with a sweat suit on and a towel draped over your head is another often used method. When I fought Tony Thornton back in 1993 I sat in the steam room, sometimes for close to an hour at a time with a sweat shirt on, for 14 days in a row right up to the weigh-in.

3. You might be a fighter trying to cut weight if…after sweating profusely on a particular day, you somehow got it into your head that it was a good idea to go home and not eat anything so that the next day you could be even lighter than you would be if you wisely ate your dinner.

You figured if you sweated that much and are down to 160 then if you didn't eat afterwards until the next day then you could probably even get down to 158 or so. You practiced methods of weight loss like this because it seemed like they made a lot of sense at the time. (Hopefully you know better now.)

4. You might be a boxer trying to lose weight if…you've found yourself in a hotel room laying on a bed furiously chewing bubble gum and spitting the accumulated saliva into a bucket for hours at a time (sometimes this scenario plays while sitting in a car on the way to a weigh-in)

5. You might be a fighter trying to cut pounds if…you know that feeling of having Albolene (our secret weapon) smeared all over you, usually under a plastic sweat suit, as you do extra roadwork in hopes of sweating off last-minute pounds.

6. You might be a fighter if...you've taken more than a few diuretics (ex-lax is the usual choice) in an attempt to lose extra weight before a fight.

7. You might be a fighter if...you read about people with (or who have symptoms of) anorexia and they remind you of yourself during the days when you struggled to make weight for fights.

All fighters know that feeling of being skinny and dehydrated yet looking in the mirror and seeing areas where they could still lose another pound or two. Or they are trimmer than they have been in several months due to all the hard work they've been putting in as well as the strict diet they have subjected themselves to. It's obvious to everyone around them that their weight is fine and they are ready to fight...but even eating an extra helping of corn and green beans for dinner makes them feel "fat and out of shape."

I can remember a time back in late 1997, for example, when I was preparing for an ESPN fight with Scott Lopeck and the weight for the fight was 175 pounds. I was over in London for three weeks of sparring with Otis Grant and I didn't check my weight even one time (that's when Otis labeled me a "scale-a-phobic") and just hoped and assumed that I was training hard enough and eating well enough that I would make the weight properly. The last thing I wanted to do was get on the scale after training one day and feel that terrible disappointment of still being a certain amount of pounds over the contracted weight. So, I made it back to the United States a week or so before the fight fully expecting to go through my usual ritual of cutting pounds over the last four or five days to come in at the proper weight. I get on the scale at the gym one day after checking myself out in the mirror at home and I am guessing that I will be about 181 pounds give or take. I
am already bracing for the fact that I will have to not eat much food, I will have to sit in the steam room several times and I will have to go to bed miserable and hungry, worried sick that I won't make the weight again. I get on the scale at the gym and my trainer keeps moving the bar to the left, meaning he is weighing me lighter and like all fighters on edge at that stage of the game (just a few days before the fight). I am completely irritated and angry as I slam the top of the scale down and yell at him “Do it right!!!” He looks at me like I'm crazy, telling me he is doing it properly. That's when a closer look reveals that I am actually 171 pounds several days before the fight, the lowest weight I have been at in just over two years. If I didn't see it with my own eyes I never would have believed it.

8. You might be a fighter if...you ever found yourself in training for a fight and trying to cut weight but the temptation for some pizza (or candy or ice cream) was just too much and you indulged yourself with some treats that you had been diligently avoiding for weeks at that point. You knew it would probably cause your weight to go back up a couple of pounds, of course, but you justified it all by saying “tomorrow I'll just run a few extra miles and work it off. I won't eat breakfast, either.”

9. You might be a fighter who is having trouble losing weight if... you weigh yourself in the gym out of view of everybody else and you come in at 165 and three quarters. Your trainer asks you afterwards what you weighed in at. Chances are you'll say "One sixty five" because, in your mind, that extra three quarters of a pound somehow doesn't count because it couldn't even find a way to make itself a full pound. If you were 166, well, OK, but 165 and three quarters? In your mind, that's 165 all the way. If you come in at 160 even you'll say you were 159 and a half because even though it is only a half of a pound difference it just seems so much lighter when you are in the ‘50s as opposed to the ‘60s.

10. You might be a fighter...if you were in the middle of trying to lose weight for a fight and after sweating profusely one particular day you quickly dried the sweat off your body with a towel because you weren't sure if it could somehow settle back into your pores and cause you to regain the water weight you just lost.

Or maybe you were battling the scale and after a particularly hard and hot day in the gym that you saw you lose quite a bit of water weight by way of the seemingly endless supply of sweat dripping from your body you had the seemingly brilliant (but entirely stupid and false) idea that you would go home afterwards and not drink or eat anything as a way to guarantee your weight would be several pounds lower than normal by the next morning.

In theory that plan might even sound like a winner but I can definitely tell you from extensive experience that sometimes what seems to be the obvious is actually the polar opposite of what you should be doing. In a nutshell...don't neglect to give your body the replenishing nutrients it needs under any circumstances.

www.IcemanJohnScully.com