Chris Eubank Jr was desperate for a pee.
It was the day after his epic victory on points over Conor Benn in April, and he was in hospital recovering. Eubank Jr had been suffering with an unbearable headache, his face swollen almost beyond recognition and a small plastic tube emerging from his left hand and connected to a bag of fluids.
Dragging himself from his bed and into the bathroom, Eubank Jr stood over the toilet and waited. But nothing happened. His bladder was full to bursting but his body could not – would not – let go.
“That’s how dehydrated I was,” he told Steven Bartlett on The Diary of a CEO podcast a few weeks after the fight with Benn. “My body would not let any fluids go – it was holding onto everything… (it was) complete dehydration.”
Chris Eubank and Conor Benn’s first fight was brutal (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)
The damage done to Eubank Jr was partly a result of the brutality of the fight with Benn — who had come up two weight classes to make the fight, and had also been taken to hospital for precautionary checks in the aftermath — but also what had gone on in the build-up.
In a bid to make the weight for the non-title middleweight bout, Eubank Jr had subjected himself to an extreme form of ‘cutting’ — the term given to the controversial and occasionally dangerous process by which boxers lose weight to make themselves eligible to fight at a certain weight division.
It had involved essentially draining his body of fluid to meet the 160lbs weight limit and had sparked grave concerns over his wellbeing, most prominently from his father, former world champion Chris Eubank Sr, who told his YouTube channel in June that his son had been “killing himself” to make the weight.
Eubank Sr had advised his son not to attempt a rematch but, on Saturday, he will meet Benn again at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium under the same conditions. And, once more, there are fears about what the impact could be.
Boxing rules state that fighters must make the relevant weight for their bout by the time they weigh in the day before their bout, a timetable that was introduced in the early 1980s.
In most cases, competitors can then put on as much weight as they wish before the start of their fight, by both rehydrating with fluids and eating. In the case of tomorrow’s fight, a clause in Eubank Jr’s contract states that he can only put on an additional 10lbs between his weigh-in at 11am this morning and the re-weigh-in on Saturday morning.
That clause underlines the oddity of this fight even happening in the first place.
Yes, there is family history — their fathers having fought twice in the 1990s — but when Benn made his professional debut in 2016, the sons never looked likely to continue the feud. Eubank Jr was seven years older than Benn, five years further into his professional career and, more pertinently, boxing at middleweight, three weight classes higher than super-lightweight Benn.
But as Benn built his profile and record as a professional, the two men were gradually manoeuvred into each other’s orbits. The potential for a seismic moment in British boxing history was too big, the financial rewards too great (Eubank Jr will earn £8m from tomorrow’s fight, and Benn £6m), for them to be kept apart.
The grudge between Chris Eubank Jr (left) and Conor Benn has helped fuel interest in their rematch (James Fearn/Getty Images)
To make the fight work, though, a compromise would be needed in terms of weight.
In 2022, that was initially decided as being a catchweight of 157lbs, three pounds beneath the middleweight limit of 160lbs that Eubank Jr had made for his most recent fight against Liam Williams, and 10lbs heavier than the 147lb welterweight limit Benn had grown into.
But that fight, initially scheduled for October 2022, was cancelled when it emerged days before that Benn had failed two voluntary drugs tests for the female fertility drug clomifene.
It took three years for the pair to be brought together again, with both agreeing to fight at the middleweight limit of 160lbs. On the surface, that suited Eubank Jr far better than his smaller opponent. To mitigate that, an offer was made to Eubank Jr; if he agreed to the 10lb rehydration clause, meaning neither man would be allowed to weigh more than 170lbs on the morning of the fight, there was even more money on the table.
Eubank took the money, despite knowing that he would usually put on 14 or 15 pounds after a weigh-in, reasoning that while restricting what he ate and drank would affect his performance, he was still confident his boxing ability would see him prevail.
That explains some of how Eubank Jr ended up spending two days in hospital hooked up to a drip after his first fight against Benn. There is a lot more besides, including Eubank Jr’s social media posts after the weigh-in (where he missed the weight by 0.05lb, earning him a £375,000 fine) showing him appearing to wear what is known as a ‘sauna suit’ to increase sweat loss, and implying that he intends to use a sauna.
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The practice is discouraged by the British Board of Boxing Control (BBBofC), but not explicitly banned. In the BBBofC rules, there is no mention of the word ‘sauna’ but it is made clear in training courses for all stakeholders that their use is prohibited in the lead-up to bouts. They can be used for recovery in training camps but not for assisting in weight loss and there have been numerous instances when the BBBofC has blocked boxers from fighting due to using saunas for that purpose
Even so, it’s widely known that many fighters use such methods. “With the sauna suits, the head is out but you’re still putting the organs like the kidneys under pressure with that kind of searing heat,” one prominent boxing manager told The Athletic, sharing their views anonymously to protect their relationships in the sport. “I’ve seen people doing sauna blankets and it’s not nice.
“There is also a hot bath where they put a towel down in the crack of the door to keep the heat in the room. I have also heard of fighters getting in the sauna in a sweat suit, or going in with a tracksuit on and doing some shadow boxing to get a sweat going.”
Performance nutritionist Lee Rickards has worked in boxing for 10 years and a key part of his role being helping boxers to make weight in the “healthiest” way possible.
He explains that manipulating a fighter’s total body water is done during the final week before the fight, once their body fat has already been reduced.
The first part of the process happens in a fight camp, with Rickards preferring to start work between eight and 12 weeks from a bout. The ideal scenario is for the fighter to lose around one per cent of their body weight per week up until the final week before the fight. Research shows that going above that amount risks losing muscle at a greater rate and can have profound effects on the male and female endocrine system.
“In men, that means loss of libido, energy, focus; cognitive function is a big one,” Rickards tells The Athletic. “But within that realm, it’s very normal to be like that as a male athlete close to a weigh-in.”
By the start of a fight week, Rickards rates fighters as being red, amber or green, depending on how far away they are from their target weight. Green means around six to eight per cent away, amber is eight to 10 per cent and red is 10 per cent or over.
“If you’re Chris Eubank Jr who’s aiming for 72kg, he could be coming into fight week at around 80kg, if not below. The higher the weight you come in to fight week, the less food you’re able to have, or the less variety of food. The less carbohydrates, the less fibre and the more you’re gonna have to sweat. It does bring problems.”
In the BBBofC’s training course handbook, there’s a stark warning about the “dangers of dehydration and inappropriate ways of making weight”. It includes a quote from former BBBofC medical officer Dr Ashwin Patel saying that “going into a fight dehydrated… can ruin your life. A particular issue for boxers is that dehydration increases risk of brain injury.”
The final plea from the board is printed in red letters: “If you cannot make the weight you box at safely – change the weight you box at”.
They reference the specific case of British boxer Kieran Farrell. His defeat to Anthony Crolla in December 2012 was the first of his professional career, but it was also the moment his life changed forever. After the 10-round bout for the English lightweight title, Farrell slumped to the canvas and was rushed to hospital suffering a bleed on the brain.
Farrell’s survival was branded a miracle and, despite losing 30 per cent of his brain, he has made a full recovery to become a successful coach in the sport, including with Daniel Dubois. But he can never fight again.
Throughout Farrell’s training camp, he struggled to shed weight. He would use a portable sauna in his bedroom like he had for many other fights. During fight week, he barely ate or drank to make the lightweight limit of 9st 9lbs.
“I would make a cup of tea, sip it once, then throw it down the sink” he says. “My coach would say, ‘Have you eaten anything this morning?’ and I would say ‘Yeah, I had some porridge and a cup of tea’. I was playing tricks on my own mind trying to make myself believe I had eaten.”
The result would be catastrophic.
“The neurosurgeon said that it was like putting my brain in a washing machine and putting it on full cycle,” he says. “It had no protection, it had no fluid around it. When I bounced about, my brain was bouncing around. It could have been a bleed from dancing about on my feet – it might not have even been a punch.”
Kieran Farrell (right) has emerged as a successful trainer with the likes of Daniel Dubois (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)
So why do it?
Farrell wasn’t willing to “lose the fight on the scales”. Nor did he want anyone to think he was unprofessional.
“You’re the d***head if you don’t make the weight. As a fighter, you’re the one getting the finger pointed at him. The fighter loses their money, they lose out on their opportunity.
“Until you experience doing it, you don’t know what it is like. You feel like death. You see some fighters on scales and you think, ‘How the f*** can he be performing the next night?’
“If I knew what was going to happen to me, of course I would not have done it but every boxer will lie barefaced to you and say they made weight great. It’s a pure lie. Nobody makes weight great.”
The amount of water manipulation a fighter has to do in fight week varies depending on how far away they are from their target weight. In general, Rickards says it starts around six to seven days out from the day of the fight with reducing a fighter’s fibre and carbohydrate intake – both of which reduce the amount of water held in the body.
“In terms of the sweat loss or the water cut, that starts anywhere from 12 hours to 18 hours before the weigh-in. An old-school fighter would possibly even do it before. But this is where it becomes like walking on a tightrope; you want to do it as close to the weigh-in as possible but if you leave it too late, you are at the risk of getting overheated.”
There are a variety of methods used by fighters. As well as saunas, some run in a sweatsuit, use diuretics, steam rooms or do hot water immersions. When revealing on YouuTube how tough he had found it to make the 160lb weight limit for the first Benn fight, Eubank Jr said: “I was in sweat suits. I had to be wrapped in heated sheets. I lay there for half an hour just sweating everything out. I’m doing all these things to drain my body of all the fluids. And it’s torture.”
None of these methods are permitted by the Board, whose two-day trainer course covers the risks of dehydration significantly, pointing out that even the slightest drop in fluids impairs performance.
In a sport like boxing, that alone can have devastating effects even without reaching the extremes of serious loss of water, which can lead to heat strokes or, as with Farrell, bleeding on the brain because of the lack of cerebrospinal fluid. The BBBofC also observes that just a two per cent loss of body fluid impairs performance while 10 per cent can cause circulatory failure and heat stroke.
That is compounded by long, gruelling bouts that are often in hot arenas under bright lights. Sweating allows the body to cool but it also means fluid is rapidly leaving the body.
Yet it remains an open secret in boxing that most fighters are resorting to such tactics to make weight. “And actually,” argues Rickards, “it is better they are doing it than not because if not, you’d have to be eating a lettuce leaf a day for 12 weeks and then you’re going to have more problems in terms of low energy availability.”
After the weigh-in, fighters will aim to get as much food and fluid into their body as possible, but, Rickards warns, “you can overdo it. We know from research that rather than having one big bolus amount of fluid, if you split it up into smaller frequent boluses, you rehydrate better.
“We know that certain electrolyte and carbohydrate concentrations rehydrate you better than other fluids. And that there’s a certain amount of carbohydrates you want to consume so you have an adequate amount of energy to fight and to have that rebound in weight.”
It is widely known that intravenous drips are used by some boxers as a way of rehydrating effectively, delivering water and/or saline into the body directly. The method is prohibited by the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA), however, and also by the BBBofC if the volume delivered exceeds 100ml within a 12-hour period. The reason for that is because flushing fluids into the system this way can mask the detection of performance-enhancing substances. It is hard to police, however, given there’s no way of knowing if an athlete has used them unless they are caught in the act.
There is no suggestion that Eubank Jr has used such proscribed methods but Anthony Fowler, who represented Great Britain at the Rio Olympics in 2016, admitted in an Instagram post earlier this year that he regularly did so. He said he started using IVs after his 2019 defeat by Scott Fitzgerald and implored the BBBofC to allow them.
Chris Eubank Jr spars ahead of his fight against Conor Benn (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
“It is just water and sodium,” said Fowler. “I learned after I got beat by Scott Fitzgerald to use IVs after I weighed in and it used to help me rehydrate and get me more fluid around the brain.
“It helped me recover faster, so why is it illegal? Explain to me how putting sodium and water into a fighter is illegal when it is making a lot less chance of brain damage or severe dehydration and collapsing.”
Weight has, once again, been a big talking point ahead of tomorrow’s clash.
Benn poked fun at his rival’s previous struggle to make the weight at their joint press conference earlier this week, observing that Eubank Jr was a “bit slim around the cheekbones”.
Eubank Jr will have the time between that second weigh-in on Saturday morning and the time he gets into the ring (around 10pm) to pack in the fluids and carbohydrates but, Rickards warns, fighters usually don’t want to eat much for the four or five hours before getting into the ring. There is also the possibility of gastrointestinal distress from piling too much in during a short time frame.
The Athletic approached the BBBofC and Eubank’s agent for comment about the health risks posed by cutting, but ultimately Eubank Jr is not the first to encounter issues around it and will not be the last.
Jamie Moore, a former light-middleweight boxer and current trainer, said on a podcast with Christie Scanlon that he lost 20lbs in 20 hours to face Ryan Rhodes in 2009: “The best description was it felt like I was dying.”
Moore lost the bout and blamed the horrendous weight cut for doing so. Eubank Jr will hope for different results tomorrow, but the anxiety will remain for many looking on.
“You’re trying to do everything you can to either have a physical advantage or certainly not to have a disadvantage,” says Rickards, who says he had few sleepless nights when working in professional football, but has had many since moving into boxing. “Working in this environment, sometimes you’re playing with fire and you need to be very careful you don’t get burned.”
