D. Mandel/Sherdog.com
Good fighters who put on dominating performances can often have opposition scrambling to cut weight and arrive -- dehydrated and barely conscious -- in a lighter division.
B.J. Penn is so good that he knocked Diego Sanchez up a weight class.
Sanchez posted on his Twitter account that he would be moving back to the 170-pound division, where most of his fights were contested at, following a soul-smothering loss to Penn in December. The working idea is usually to spit out every ounce you can to be as big as you can. But this doesn’t work for everyone: some guys simply function better without killing themselves to arrive at 4 percent body fat the day of the weigh-in. Swaying listlessly on a scale and fighting just over 24 hours later is not a one-size-fits-all strategy.
Nick Diaz looked OK at 170; at 185, he throttled Frank Shamrock and Scott Smith. Randy Couture died two deaths against Chuck Liddell; he came back, heavier, to bury Tim Sylvia and Gabriel Gonzaga. This is good for Sanchez’s career, and better for his kidney functioning.