Drying Out: The discomfort of watching a boxer cut weight

Usually, the discomfort experienced by someone watching a boxer cut weight is exceeded only by the discomfort of the boxer having to actually cut the weight. It is, for the bystander, a unique, unnerving experience, both voyeuristic and to a degree perverted. It can be found, on the scale of discomfort, somewhere between hearing your neighbours quarrel and copulate, and at no stage is the experience enjoyable for anyone either directly or tangentially involved. In fact, to sit and watch a boxer dehydrate and cut weight is to realise just how inhumane the experience is and how out of place you, a human being, are inside a boxing gym at that moment in time. 

It is, in short, not for you: this moment, this struggle, this job. To be granted access to it is a privilege, yes, but one for which you become less and less grateful the longer the experience lasts. You are, after all, essentially watching the slow disintegration of a man; your presence necessary only to ensure he has a witness should he disappear completely. 

“Warm enough?” asked George Groves two days before facing Carl Froch at Wembley Stadium in 2014. It was a question asked with a smile, for Groves knew this would be one of the last his gaunt face would produce, and it was a question asked half an hour after he had entered the gym at 8.30pm and switched on its large blue heater; meaning that by the time it was asked enough warm air had been blowing into an already warm room to guarantee the three of us inside were suitably uncomfortable. “Thought so,” he said, sauntering through to the bathroom. 

There, inside the gym’s bathroom, the boxer stepped on a set of scales, while Barry O’Connell, his strength and conditioning coach, waited for a progress report. Reluctant, at first, to provide one, Groves, having exited the bathroom, eventually said, via a mumble, “Seventy-nine and a half kilos,” and focused instead on opening a suitcase full of items of clothing. “About 12 stone six.” 

“You want to do a session here and then go to Virgin Active?” asked O’Connell. 

“No, we’ll stay here now,” said Groves, preparing for a super-middleweight (12 stone or 168 pounds) fight in 48 hours. “It will be fine. I’ll do some skipping to start and then go from there.”

“When did you last eat?” 

“I had cereal at seven o’clock.”

“So that extra weight there is your cereal. Have you had a shit since then?” 

“No. I ate cereal and put on just over half a pound.”

“You can use the cross-trainer at my gym if you need to.”

“No, I’ll be all right. I’ll just have a skip, have a shake out, touch the bag and do half of what we did yesterday.”

Satisfied, O’Connell now rose from the sofa and allowed the boxer to start getting dressed. “Whatever you want,” he said. “You know what to do. You’ve done it before.” 

Indeed, he had, and Groves, per the routine, now removed from his suitcase the following items of clothing: T-shirts, shorts, chunky tracksuit bottoms, hooded jumpers, a sweatsuit, and a gilet, all of which were to end up on his body, accompanied by a black woolly hat for his head and black mittens for his hands. Hardly a surprise, each item, once applied, suddenly made the boxer appear three times the size of a regular super-middleweight, yet the hope was that he would soon shrink inside this cocoon; this suit of sweat. 

Until then, Groves sat in front of the heater holding a skipping rope, content to feel the hot air on his face while he checked his phone for messages. It was a warm up of sorts, a warm up in the literal sense, and Groves, suffocated by layers of clothing, grew accustomed to the heat. “Do you want me to fetch any water?” asked O’Connell, concerned by the lack of motion.

“No,” said Groves. “No water now. I’m drying out.” 

A minute later, at 9.16pm, he moved the heater closer to the ring, climbed inside the ring, and began to skip to “Ho Hey” by The Lumineers. “I want to be 12 stone tonight so I can have breakfast in the morning,” he declared. “I’ll have breakfast and that’s it really. We don’t weigh-in until four o’clock, so we’ll get there an hour before to get on the scales and do a check weigh-in. Then we’ll go out back and do whatever needs to be done.”

“I can bring a bag of stuff if you want,” said O’Connell. 

“All we need is a couple of dumbbells.”

“I’ll take a kettlebell, two dumbbells…”

“Yeah, you know what’s needed.” 

Already bored, Groves stopped skipping after just two minutes to again check his phone and tweak his playlist. In the process he said to nobody in particular, “I just saw a bit on Ringside where they all said they were surprised I didn’t do or say more at the press conference today. It was as if they were all disappointed.” Groves shook his head, confused. “He’ll be thinking about the left hook, though.”

Nobody responded, so Groves stopped there; talking at least. The rope in his hands now revolved to the sounds of “VCR” by The XX and in time with this song he bounced just enough to prevent the rope catching the soles of his boots. Better yet, there were at last signs of sweat. It ran in rivulets down his forehead before collecting on his lip and Groves, having tasted it, sensed that things were now moving in the right direction. 

Still, though, it was not enough. Not enough movement. Not enough sweat. Groves sensed this, too, which is why at the end of each song he would drop to the canvas and perform an unspecified number of press-ups. Sometimes this meant as few as four; other times as many as 15. 

“I could sleep now,” said O’Connell, sitting on the edge of the ring. 

“Feel free,” replied Groves. 

“I love this heat.”

“Is it that warm, yeah? I can’t tell.” 

“It’s lovely.”

Whether used to describe the stifling heat or the rigours of the weight cut, “lovely” is the kind of word only ever heard said by a bystander and rubbernecker at a time like that. Never would it be a word used by the boxer, the one cutting weight, to describe this experience. Instead, they, the boxers, have other words. 

“Boiling down to light-heavyweight (175 pounds or 12 stone 5 pounds) was an absolute nightmare,” said Tony Bellew, a former WBC cruiserweight champion who, in 2014, moved from light heavyweight to cruiserweight. “As an amateur I’d fight at 91 kilos, which is 14 stone 4; the cruiserweight limit. So, when I turned professional, I thought I’d do the weight (light heavyweight) easily. I walked around at 15 stone and was eating shit as an amateur.

“For three months I went on a strict diet, trained really hard and got my weight down to about 13 stone 4. I was then told I was carrying about 10 pounds of water, listened to what people said, and got as close as I could to the weight.

“It was only when I got to around the age of 29 that shit hit the fan. That’s when it got too much. I was doing the diet and still not losing weight. I had to learn the hard way. When I hit 30, I knew it was no longer safe. I realised that after the first (Isaac) Chilemba fight.”

Bellew’s first fight with Chilemba in March 2013 proved to be one of the Liverpudlian’s worst performances as a professional. Sluggish from the off, and unable to get to grips with the slippery South African at any stage, Bellew was relieved just to come through the traumatic experience with a draw.

“I couldn’t function properly after six rounds,” he recalled. “I had no endurance, no durability. I was finished. It was so hard.

“Back then I was just training to make weight. I wasn’t training to improve my boxing ability. My whole focus was on making weight. That was the hardest part of my career.”

Suffice it to say, a weight struggle can have myriad and often grave consequences. These can range from a lack of energy (as Bellew experienced against Chilemba in 2013) and diminished punch resistance to spells of dizziness and, alas, the fate all boxers must try to ignore every time they set foot in a ring. 

In the case of Richie Wenton, a 1994 British super-bantamweight title fight against Bradley Stone was the reality check he, and his sport, needed.

“We weighed in the same day (as the fight),” Wenton remembered. “I was struggling for weight, but so was Bradley. We had the same problem because we were both big for 8 stone 10.

“Trust me, it’s always hard to do the weight, and regular checkups are vital. I’m talking six weeks before, right through to the fight. Not a couple of weeks before. It takes a lot from the brain to make weight. It’s fucking dangerous. We know that now.”

Stone, just 23, tragically passed away as a result of injuries suffered in his fight against Wenton. It will never be known for certain whether the enduring battle to make weight played a part in his untimely demise, but what cannot be disputed is that the abnormal process of dehydrating the brain wouldn’t have improved Stone’s ability to soak up punishment or outlast an opponent in a scheduled 12-round fight. Nor, of course, would the same-day weigh-in have helped Stone or Wenton’s chances of rehydrating in the hours leading up to their infamous bout at York Hall.

“Sometimes I wonder if the day before weigh-ins are safer or not because the guys are definitely much better hydrated,” said Barry McGuigan, whose Nigerian opponent Young Ali also passed away following their fight in 1982. “But some guys, because of the 24-hour thing, might make even greater sacrifices and take even bigger risks to get down in weight knowing that they’ll have 24 hours to recuperate.

“You reach a point, however, where you’re so dry that it’s almost inconceivable that you can rehydrate properly. You might feel rehydrated, but your brain isn’t rehydrated in that 24-hour period.

“Putting a cap on what guys can weigh after a weigh-in, like the IBF (International Boxing Federation) do, should be implemented across the board. You shouldn’t be able to put on any more than 10 pounds after the weigh-in. If he’s gaining 20 pounds, he was obviously badly dehydrated when he was on the scales. And that’s dangerous.”

To avoid these dangers, the lucky ones move up. In other words, they cut themselves some slack. They give themselves breathing space. 

“The moment I moved up in weight was one of the greatest moments in my life,” said Duke McKenzie, a world champion at flyweight, bantamweight, and super-bantamweight. “I’ve never felt a greater sense of relief.

“After moving up from flyweight, I was able to eat and drink what I wanted, and you wouldn’t believe how happy it made me. When you’re happy at a weight, you can get up in the morning and have a cooked breakfast. You can have a proper lunch and an evening meal, too. Then you wake up the next morning dead on the weight. That’s all you can ask for really.”

McKenzie’s final fight as a flyweight came against Dave McAuley in 1989. This fight would not only mark his first defeat as a pro, but also cost him his world title. “The McAuley fight was a nightmare,” he said. “I’ve never felt worse going into a fight.

“We got to the weigh-in and Mickey Duff (promoter) looked at me and said, ‘McKenzie, you look like a black pair of braces.’ He said I looked ill, decimated. Whatever confidence I had disappeared in an instant.

“That was a real harrowing experience. But if I didn’t suffer that defeat, there may have been another defence, and that could have been a defence too far for me. Who knows? I could have gone on for one too many and experienced what Paul Ingle and Spencer Oliver did. I needed to go through that McAuley experience in order to do the right thing.”

In theory, improvements should come with both experience and education. We should, as a sport, be maturing with age and therefore be ideally positioned to learn from and correct past mistakes. Boxers, likewise, must learn as they go. 

“The last year and a half was a struggle to make featherweight,” McGuigan said. “But I didn’t eat properly. I did the old atrophy where you’d eat one meal a day and shrink as opposed to eating three meals a day, cutting out all the crap and making the weight while big, strong and muscular.

“If I’d had Shane, my son, training me, I’d have been a monster at featherweight. I’d have been much, much stronger. I may even have done super-bantamweight.

“I just did it the way everybody else did back then. I was on the weight two weeks out. Nowadays most guys never do the weight until they’re on the scale. The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) guys are even worse. They can drop a stone or two the night before.”

Back in Hammersmith, George Groves had stopped skipping, the rope now hanging by his side. “My dad texted me today and I thought, Oh God,” he said. “I can’t just fob my dad off, so I have to give him a real answer to keep him happy. He’ll have his theories.” In order to relay his father’s message, Groves again checked his phone, grateful for any kind of distraction. “He texted me today at four o’clock saying, ‘Fear factor at the weigh-in, champ. Stand your ground.’ I was thinking, Oh, he’s obviously disappointed with today because I didn’t fucking put it on him.” So when I saw him earlier, I said, “You all right, Dad?” and he goes, “Yeah. Brilliant today. Excellent.” I thought, Thank fuck for that.” 

Fifteen press-ups then followed as the playlist switched from one XX tune to another. Meanwhile, O’Connell, the designated bystander, busied himself by touring the gym, taking in the framed pictures of The Four Kings and The Greatest on the wall. “(Marvin) Hagler was my favourite,” he said, “because he was my dad’s favourite. I saw him in magazines but never got to experience his fights live, which was a shame.” His eyes next settled on an image of Groves, arms aloft, celebrating victory over bitter rival James DeGale in May 2011. “Is that the British title?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” said Groves. “It’s the (James) DeGale fight, I think. They look like David Haye’s hands behind me. I was with Adam (Booth) then.”

“Where was that? The ExCeL?”

“No, the O2 Arena. Good times.”

Unwelcome and uninvited, the sudden silence in the room now led to introspection, so Groves, to fight it, returned to skipping, the instinctive rhythm of which helped. He then did some more press-ups only to stop at 9.37pm and start shadowboxing, managing barely a minute before disappearing into the bathroom. O’Connell, watching him go, asked, “You tired?” To which George replied, “No, no, I’m good.” 

Upon his return boxing gloves were applied to his hands. Interestingly, too, the gloves were Velcro ones, therefore requiring zero effort on the part of the boxer, who only had to slip them on, or indeed the trainer, who would under normal circumstances have to lace them up. 

With these gloves now on, and the buzzer ringing, Groves began to prod a heavy bag at the back of the gym. Never, for all his trying, would the prods become punches and never would the boxer’s pace go beyond pedestrian. Any flow, meanwhile, was frequently disturbed by interruptions, all of the boxer’s doing. He would, for example, punch and then stop, go for a walk, play with the bag, sit down, check his phone, stare aimlessly into space – and punch again. 

To begin round two, he even jogged on the spot, so desperate was he to revive his tired body. Yet still the same pattern emerged; still he couldn’t wait for the buzzer to sound and his gloves to come off. 

Hands at last free, he sat down on the edge of the ring, where he changed the song playing to something more upbeat: Arcade Fire’s “Ready to Start”. More than just a change in pace, the song, or at least its title, sent a clear message. It urged the boxer to get up, re-enter the ring and start working again. So, that is what he did. He got back in the ring, he removed his mittens, his gilet and his trousers, and he then dropped to the floor to perform press-ups, more of them. 

In this position he was soon kneeling with his head to the floor, almost as if in mid-prayer, and appeared defeated, unable to pull himself upright again. However, if only because he knew he had to, he managed to summon enough strength to roll onto his side and rattle through some sit-ups before once more – and for the last time – flopping onto his back and staring at the ceiling. From there he scratched his head and cleared, by blowing on it, the fog that had built up on his phone screen. 

“How do you feel?” asked Barry, standing by the ropes. 

“Okay,” Groves replied. “I’m sweating. I want to do as little as possible but sweat as much as possible. It’s not as bad as being in the sauna but it will have the same effect.”

He pulled himself upright and, at 10.08pm, dashed to the bathroom to splash water on his face. “I’ve never done it like this before,” he said, “taking layers off at a time. I think you store heat in the head and hands, so that’s the worst part.”

The gloves were now off, the hat was off, and so too was his hooded top and T-shirt. Yet, despite all this unrobing and the losing of layers, the boxer still looked chunkier than usual, bogged down by clothes. “I’m going to eat tonight and tomorrow,” he said, resting on the edge of the ring. “I want to weigh in wearing my headphones because that will really fuck with Froch’s head.” He smiled broadly. “He thinks I’m tight at the weight. I’ll say they weigh two pounds. No fucker will go away and check.”

“Have you actually weighed them yet?” asked Barry. 

“I weighed my headphones this morning and they were point three of a kilo, which is about half a pound.”

By the time Groves stepped back into the ring at 10.15 pm, he was now down to just his red and black Lonsdale sweat suit, several T-shirts, and a pair of baggy trousers. This time he was to stay in the ring for only five minutes, just long enough to rush through a number of sit-ups and skip. He was then out and finished by 10.20 pm. “That’s about an hour, isn’t it?” he said to be sure. “What do you reckon? Four pounds? Five pounds? Eight pounds? That would be nice.” He stripped the remaining clothes from his back, peeling them off one by one; the resultant sweat forming a puddle by his feet.

“I reckon one and a half kilos,” said O’Connell. 

Groves looked shocked. “If it’s only that much, I’ll cry,” he said. “That’s only about three pounds.”

“The weight-making has scarred me mentally to this day and it’s still pretty bad,” said Duke McKenzie. “I went to bed the other night and had a Boost (chocolate) bar and a cranberry and orange drink by my bed. If I wake up at three o’clock in the morning and I’m hungry, I’ll reach over and eat it, no questions asked.

“People who have never experienced making weight will never understand how it affects you. But it does.”

Richie Wenton, himself a one-time super-bantamweight, can relate. “When doing offshore gas projects, we’d do a lot of work on power stations and the conditions were very hot,” he said. “We’d be in boiler rooms and I’d be sweating like a pig.

“I’d notice that all the other lads were drinking water at all times. But I wouldn’t do that. I’ve always had tunnel vision when it comes to drinking water when I’m dehydrated. So, I don’t take water with me. When I’m thirsty, I won’t drink.

“I’m used to the sensation of feeling thirsty and light-headed. I’m used to being dehydrated. I’ll go on these jobs and be sweating through T-shirt after T-shirt and won’t touch any water. The other lads look at me like I’m mad.”

Madness is, if not a prerequisite, certainly a byproduct of cutting weight. In fact, a little over a year before watching George Groves make weight ahead of fighting Carl Froch, I stood and watched the unbeaten super-middleweight ask a Virgin Active employee to open another man’s gym locker, thinking inside it he would find his belongings. Happy to help, of course, it took less than 30 seconds for the man with the bolt cutters to chop through the locker’s padlock and prise open the door to locker 92 and it took half that time for the boxer beside him, the one who had summoned him, to realise he was opening the wrong one. “Shit,” Groves said. “My stuff’s in 96, not 92.”

Prior to this Groves had closed the door to his locker, number 96, and left inside it his clothes, his wallet, and his mobile phone. He then later returned to the locker for his phone, only in the five minutes that had passed he had somehow forgotten the passcode required to reopen what he had just slammed shut. That led to a call to reception, bolt cutters, confusion, and an apology. Also, a lesson: when hungry, when wearing a zip hoodie, a sweat suit, a large puffer jacket, tracksuit bottoms and ski salopettes, and when planning to enter a sauna on a Thursday night in the hope of losing eight pounds before a Friday afternoon weigh-in, it is easy to lose concentration. “Sorry, that would have never happened if I wasn’t cutting weight,” Groves informed the man holding a broken padlock. “I don’t normally make mistakes like that.”

Fourteen months on, Groves now had his own gym, his own locker, and a better way of doing things. “Twelve-stone, one-and-a-half,” he said at 10.33pm, standing on the bathroom scales. “I lied at the start as well. I was 80-and-a-half kilos, but I told you I was 79-and-a-half.”

O’Connell, waiting nearby, rolled his eyes. “Do you want to do some abs to finish?” he asked. 

“No,” said Groves. “I’m done. I’ll be underweight in the morning.”

Certain of it, he packed his sweaty garments back into the case and slipped into a navy polo shirt. A dry one. “That wasn’t an effort,” he said, buttoning up. “That wasn’t trauma. I’ve been there when it’s horrible and you’re gasping. Tonight was fine.” As he now threw a flat cap on his head, he watched his friend, Luke, enter the gym and sit on one of the leather sofas. “I thought I’d come down and see you skipping and all moody,” his friend said. 

“Nah, that didn’t happen tonight,” said Groves. “Only did a bit of skipping really. Felt good.” 

“How’s your weight?”

“Twelve stone one. That’ll do.” 

“You’ll lose the rest in your sleep,” encouraged Luke. “Two wanks and you’ll be a pound under.”

Ordinarily Groves might have laughed at something as crude and unfiltered as that. However, while feeling good in relative terms, he was still some way off feeling human, easily amused. Keen, in fact, to escape, both the gym and company, he was now wheeling his suitcase towards the door and itching to switch off the lights. “I’m going to eat at least twice now before the weigh-in,” he decided. “I’ve eaten a fair bit today actually. I had some Nando’s, a bit of my normal food, some cereal this morning, and some cereal before I came out. I’ve eaten enough. I’ve eaten just shy of a normal day’s…” His voice then trailed off as he pondered what Friday, the day of the weigh-in and therefore freedom, would eventually bring. He licked his dry lips and stared gormlessly at the round clock on the windowsill: tick tock, tick tock. Finally, he blinked. “Fuck it,” he said. “Let’s go.”