An agreed weight was used to describe a catch-weight in the traditional way, when only eight (8) division limits existed and all weigh-ins were done “day or hours” before the fight. A historical marker that points to when “day of” fight ended is the advent of television. In boxing and in Muhammad Ali’s time, they started televising the weigh-in proceedings to promote fights necessitating a “day before” fight weigh-in.
With modern conditioning and training methods, today’s fighters are able to cut weight for a “day before” fight weigh-in and regain the same weight on “day of” the fight.The purpose of a catch-weight is to compensate for the ability of bigger boxers to cut weight before a “day before” fight weigh-in and re-build to a weight more than the specified limit (division or catch-weight) on “day of” the fight with little effects to his performance. The catch weight is not only to provide a level playing field but also to prevent weight mismatches that can endanger the fighters. And more importantly, the catch-weight is to ensure the fight is not canceled due last minute disagreement on fight time.
A case of a weight mismatch is the Arturo Gatti vs Joey Gamache fight. In the controversial fight between Gatti vs Gamache, Gamache's handlers claimed Gatti had gained 19 pounds since the weigh-in the “day before” and thus had a large advantage over Gamache. This resulted in serious injuries to the smaller Gamache. After Gatti-Gamache, some boxing commissions started weighing boxers a second time.
Combat sports commonly have defined weight classes with specific weight limits. For example, each boxing division with the exception of heavyweight has its own limits for weight classes, ranging from 105 pounds for minimumweight to 200 pounds for cruiserweight and varying in range in the weight classes in between. In order to fight for a championship in these weight classes the fighters must come in to the fight at or below said weight.
Cases can arise when a fight does not occur within a specific weight class limit. In certain cases a contract for a fight will specify that the two fighters come into the fight at another limit. Often, this limit will be at a midpoint between two weight classes. Recent examples of catch weight fights where a weight limit was different from that of a defined weight class include the second fight between Jermain Taylor and Kelly Pavlik, which was fought at a catch weight of 166 pounds and the Félix Trinidad-Roy Jones, Jr. fight, which was fought at 171 pounds.
In another example, fighters can agree to fight at a formal weight; however, at weigh-in a fighter can come in over the formal weight. So the fight is not canceled, an agreement may be reached where the fight is made at a catch weight. Commonly, the fighter who comes in overweight pays a penalty - for example a 20% penalty with 10% going to the fighter who made weight and 10% going to a commission sanctioning the fight. An example of this catch weight situation occurred at UFC 104 where Anthony Johnson came in over the welterweight limit of 170 for his fight against Yoshiyuki Yoshida. While commissions sometimes give a one pound grace, Johnson came in at 176. An agreement was made that the fight would occur at a catch weight of 176.
Oftentimes, catch weight fights are still considered fights within a formal weight class. For example, when Manny Pacquiao fought Miguel Cotto, the fight was at a catch weight of 145 pounds to accommodate Pacquiao's smaller physique. Boxing has a junior welterweight weight class with a weight limit of 140 and a welterweight weight class with a weight limit of 147. Since the fight was under the 147 limit and above the 140 limit, the fight was considered a welterweight fight as well as being considered a catch weight fight. In addition, the World Boxing Organization sanctioned this fight for the welterweight title since the fight was under the welterweight limit.
Another example was at UFC 99 when Wanderlei Silva fought Rich Franklin at a catch weight bout of 195 pounds. Silva typically fought at the Light Heavyweight weight class of 205 pounds, while Franklin fought at the Middleweight weight class of 185 pounds. They agreed on a catch weight bout, and both men weighed in at 194 for the fight.
It should also be noted that the term 'catchweight', with the above meaning, is especially prevalent in North America; other countries may well consider catchweight to be the old wrestling meaning, when to make a contest more interesting they might have a good middleweight meeting a not-so-good heavyweight, etc.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.