Askren moving to middleweight following ONE Championship's new weight-cutting policy
ONE Championship welterweight champion Ben Askren is moving up to middleweight in light of the promotion's revolutionary new weight-cutting policy.
Following the weight-cut-related death of Yang Jian Bing, ONE Championship announced a strict policy that forces fighters to compete close to their "walking weight," something Askren is completely on board with.
"Under my understanding, pretty much everybody is moving up a weight," Askren told MMAFighting.com's Marc Raimondi. "I don't think anyone is staying at the same weight. That's the kind of consensus they came to after talking to most of the fighters."
Under the promotion's new policy, fighter's will be required to give frequent weight updates leading up to a fight, and will have to pass weight and hydration tests multiple times during fight week in order to compete. If a fighter fails a weight test or a gravity hydration test, they will be pulled from the bout. Rapid weight-cutting through extreme dehydration is one of the most dangerous aspects of MMA, and ONE Championship is trying to minimize that danger.
"The worst 24- to 36-hour period of my whole camp, the part I like the least is the part where I've gotta cut 13 to 15 pounds of water weight," Askren said. "And now you're telling me I don't have to do that anymore. That's not a punishment to me. I wasn't saying, 'Shoot, I was really looking forward to that.'"
Because there are no commissions regulating ONE Championship, the promotion can enact new changes as soon as it sees fit. The UFC, on the other hand, would have to go through individual commissions in order to pass such a policy.
"If the UFC did that, people would follow course just like they did with USADA testing," Askren said. "It might be a little harder, but at the end of the day once fighters do it a couple times and they realize they're fighting someone their size and they don't have to do a severe dehydration, they're gonna like it. It's safer, it's healthier. It's better all around for the fighters."