UFC lightweight Michael Chiesa believes he would be a welterweight if the promotion tested his hydration levels prior to a fight.

The promotion previously has done so for fighters as part of new weight guidelines. But apparently, Chiesa (14-3 MMA, 7-3 UFC) hasn’t triggered any alarms.

The 30-year-old UFC veteran won’t say the number from which he starts when he cuts weight to fight. But he said such a test might reveal the lengths to which he goes to compete at 155 pounds.

“I’m a guy that struggles with my weight cut, even when I’m doing it right,” Chiesa told MMAjunkie Radio. “Even when I’m doing it right, it’s always hard.”

The the way things are right now, Chiesa gets to work of shrinking massively on fight week, the same as hundreds of other fighters who seek as big a competitive advantage as possible inside the octagon. He’s made peace with a trade-off: suffering for a better chance.

“But I look at the big picture,” he said.

Since the implementation of early weigh-ins, the numbers of fighters who’ve missed weight has doubled over the previous two-year period, according to figures compiled by MMAjunkie’s Mike Bohn. The promotion has lost several high-profile bouts due to fighters coming in heavy or complications during a weight cut.

Despite new guidelines that require an athlete to show up within 8 percent of his or her target weight on the week of a fight, with additional monitoring for those who come in heavier, the misses at the scale continue unabated.

Recently, a video of UFC welterweight star Darren Till’s harrowing – and ultimately unsuccessful – weight cut for a headliner opposite Stephen Thompson at UFC Fight Night 130 sparked outrage from one prominent regulator, who said the culture of weight-cutting would lead to another death in the sport.

There’s widespread acknowledgement among fighters and industry veterans that the whole system needs fixing. But there’s not a consensus yet on what needs to be done to keep fighters from endangering their health, despite proactive measures taken by a few prominent regulators.

UFC President Dana White, one of the sport’s most powerful stakeholders, believes early weigh-ins are at the root of the problem. He’s vowed to abandon the practice in favor of afternoon weigh-ins that previously served as the official weigh-ins.

To support his decision, White has cited the numbers of misses at the scale and a competitive culture in which any change is exploited for maximum advantage by the fighters. At the same time, he’s also implied others are simply lax about the process of cutting weight.

“I don’t know any fighters that are morning people,” White said. “Most of them stay up half the night and sleep half the day, so that might have something to do with the morning weigh-ins too.”

Chiesa, like several fighters who’ve spoken out against the move, takes issue with White’s arguments.

“Nobody gets a good night’s rest the day before weigh-ins,” Chiesa said. “Most guys I talk to are smart and start their cut the day before weigh-ins, whether it’s in the evening or in the morning. They get crummy sleep, and then you move on, and then you finish your cut.”

The net result of moving weigh-ins from the morning to the evening, Chiesa said, is giving fighters two additional hours to make weight. The cutoff for morning weigh-ins is typically at 11 a.m., while the evening weigh-ins require fighters to be on weight at 1 p.m., three hours prior to being transported to the official scale.

“That’s two extra hours,” Chiesa said. “That makes no sense. So, basically, you want to shift everything for a couple of hours? Do you think that would have helped Mackenzie Dern? Do you think that would have helped Darren Till? Absolutely not.”

There’s only one way to fix the problem of fighters missing at the scale, Chiesa said, and it’s to eliminate altogether the practice of cutting weight.

“Period,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what time you start it and what time you end it. I want (a 165-pound weight division) just as bad as the next guy.”

The Associated of Boxing Commissions this year adopted several new weight classes that shorten the gap between the ones currently promoted by the UFC. Yet the promotion has hedged on adopting them, particularly 165-pound and 175-pound divisions that could eliminate the need for the 170-pound welterweight class, one of its longest running divisions.

White has dismissed new weight classes as the solution to the promotion’s weight-cutting woes. Chiesa thinks there’s more behind that opinion.

“It’s the legacy of the 170-pound weight division,” Chiesa said. “Next to heavyweight, that’s the most prestigious weight class in the UFC – Georges St-Pierre, Matt Hughes. It’s a legacy thing. I can respect that.”

Chiesa agrees with White that additional divisions won’t keep athletes from endangering themselves on the scale. As much as he’d like the option of fighting in another division, he said the real choice is much more stark.

“We could add weight classes, we could change the time of weigh-ins – that’s not going to curb the problem,” he said. “The problem is weight-cutting.”

Chiesa points to recent policy changes made by the Asia-based ONE Championship promotion, which moved swiftly to curb weight-cutting after one of its fighters died from dehydration during a cut. The promotion conducts multiple hydration tests of fighters the week they are scheduled to compete, and those that fail face automatic bout cancellations. Fighters are required to fight at their “walking weight.”

Stateside, the California State Athletic Commission has taken the most aggressive action to date against excessive weight-cutting, adopting a 10-point plan that includes hydration checks and recommendations for fighters with weight issues to move up in division.

Still, only a small portion of UFC events are held in jurisdictions where commissions have taken a strong stance against weight-cutting, leaving the majority of the burden on the promotion. And while additional monitoring has more clearly identified the problem, the industry-leader has yet to figure out how to prevent it from happening regularly.

Chiesa, for one, believes the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency needs to get involved. He thinks there’s a correlation between the implementation of an IV ban under USADA and the number of weight misses in recent years, and the agency should now add a new step to their routine to protect fighters.

“It’s not USADA’s job to see if we can make weight,” Chiesa said. “But they’re already coming to our door, collecting our piss. You might as well test it and see if we’re hydrated. What’s it going to take? Do we have to wait for somebody to really croak?”

Of course, everyone agrees that a death in the sport is a worst-case scenario that must be avoided. White claims his decision to move the weigh-ins was made after extensive research, and he has the support of most UFC fighters.

But Chiesa believes the ultimate effect of the switch will reward the minority at the expense of the majority.

“This sport has a tendency of taking away from people that do it right,” Chiesa said. “You find guys cutting corners, getting away with doing PEDs, getting a slap on the wrist and getting to go back. But that takes away from the guys that don’t, the guys that are going about this the right way.

“Same with the weight-cutting thing. Let’s just change the rule and essentially screw over the people who do the right thing. We shouldn’t have the rug ripped out from under us.”

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