Gunnar Nelson calls for elimination of extreme weight cutting: 'It's nonsense'

Gunnar Nelson thinks fighting the scale is starting to become more important than fighting your opponent.

Weight cutting has never been an issue for Nelson, a modestly-sized welterweight who walks around close to his competition size of 170 pounds. He's baffled by the lengths that his peers will go to to attain an advantage at the cost of their health.

"Why do two men the same size cut up to 15 kilos, weigh in the day before, and then walk in the ring and put on 10 or 12 kilos the next day? Why is this happening? It makes absolutely no sense," Nelson told Damon Martin of FOX Sports.

"Almost everyone cuts a huge amount of weight just for people to kill themselves for a few kilos. It's nonsense; let's face it."

While weight cutting plays a part in other combat sports including boxing and amateur wrestling, rarely are the losses and gains as extreme as they are in MMA where fighters are known to dehydrate themselves to fool the scale only to balloon up on fight night.

Despite evidence that such practices can negatively affect a fighter's energy levels and their ability to take a punch, there has been little reform in the sport.

Suggestions have been made by various promotions and state commissions on how to improve the culture, but Nelson thinks the simplest solution is to put a complete stop to weight cutting.

"I think they should get rid of it," Nelson said. "Yeah, definitely."