McGuigan: Check fighters weight to avoid tragedies
Barry McGuigan has urged the British Boxing Board of Control to closely monitor the weights of fighters in the build-up to bouts to help prevent serious brain injuries.
McGuigan, who held the WBA featherweight crown in 1986, feels regular checks would discourage individuals from taking on fights when they know they cannot reach the regulation weight in time for the contest.
The Irish boxer's comments come ahead of Wednesday's meeting of BBBC stewards in London to study reports into the injury suffered by Paul Ingle in last month's IBF featherweight title fight in Sheffield.
Stewards at the meeting are likely to insist that championship boxers face regular weight-checks.
"Dehydration is the one thing that has connected all of these injuries," said McGuigan.
"The problem is reducing weight too quickly, it is not about losing weight, because all fighters have trouble with that. That's where the danger is.
"It causes dehydration in the fluid in the brain. The brain becomes smaller and there is more room for it to shake about and a greater risk.
"What they (the BBBC) have got to do is monitor weight loss in fighters and fighters have to understand they cannot afford to take fights when they are too heavy.
"A featherweight who weighs nine stone at championship weight cannot accept a fight when he is say 10 stone two weeks before. They have got to have the courage to say 'he is too heavy.
"The way to identify guys who have weight trouble is to weigh them on the Friday night. They box on the Saturday and they weigh them half-an-hour before they fight and if there is a huge discrepancy then he is a marked man.
"He is then identified for the future and they can keep and eye on him."
McGuigan - who now works as a pundit for Sky television - claims that other measures, such as giving doctors the chance to call an end to fights, should also be considered.
"A full-scale enquiry will not identify anything that we did not already know," he told BBC Radio Five.
"The common denominator amongst all of these incidents in the ring has been rapid weight loss. They have got to make referees a little bit more alert and maybe stop fights sooner.
"They should also say that cornermen have to work closely with doctors. If they are not happy with a fighter, the way he looks, the way he reacts in the corner, doctors may have the ability to terminate a fight.
"I don't think there are going to be any radical or sweeping changes. The talk of reducing rounds and the idiotic remark by one of the MPs to reduce or to stop head-punching is ridiculous and stupid."
