#mma Fighter Dies. Sauna weightcut to blame

A sad story this week

Nova Uniao flyweight fighter Leandro “Feijao” Souza passed away while cutting weight Thursday for Friday’s Shoot Brazil 43 card in Rio de Janeiro. He was 26 years old.

Souza reportedly passed out in the sauna, and was transported to the hospital, where he was declared dead. He had two pounds to go to make weight.

Nova Uniao founder and Shooto Brazil president Andre Pederneiras announced the news on his Facebook account.

“It is with great regret that we here report the death of the Leandro Caetano De Souza. The athlete died at the emergency unit in Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro. The reasons are not yet known. We would like to express condolences to all friends and family.”

Souza’s teammate and sometime coach Andre Santos offered further details, via MMAFighting.com.

The Shooto event was canceled due to the difficult news.

”Cutting weight” is not the same thing as ”losing weight”.  I often hear from people, how do you lose weight for a fight?! Part of it is through proper diet and nutrition, and then the second half is by ”cutting weight”—which is a temporary loss of weight that will be held until the weigh ins and then replaced.  Typically speaking, sauna, Epsom salt baths, and other methods of sweating the water out of your system are used.  With weighin’s occurring 24 hours before the fight, it allows fighters an opportunity to regain most of their weight, even if it involves IV fluids to replace the lost liquids.

Personally, I would love to see MMA adapt a ”boxing” rule, where competitors are reweighed the day of the competition and are only allowed to regain a certain percentage of weight before the bout.  This would keep the size equation a bit more fare for competitors, and would help protect fighters from permanently damaginghttps://www.magicalray.tv/core/wp-admin/post-new.php their bodies.  In the sport of BJJ and Submission Grappling they actually make you weigh yourself right before you step onto the mats to compete.

Having over a decade of fight experience and having competed in the Lightweight, Welterweight, MiddleWeight, and LightHeavy division during that time, I am familiar with weight cutting and will tell you…often making weight is the most difficult part of the fight.

As a fighter, if you are cutting significant weight before a bout, it is always important to have someone supervise the cut.  With fines and penalties cutting into your fight purse for missing weight, I understand why several fighters will literally let themselves go to their grave to keep all of their fight purse.  I still believe Ole Laursen’s drastic weight cut against Giorgio Petrosyan was the main reason why the bout ended with such a violent KO.  That was one of the few times as a coach I have been close to calling a fighter weight cuts off.