Welcome to Weight Cut, a new series on BoxingScene. Despite the head trauma and violence of boxing, many fighters say that making weight – often a drawn-out process involving voluntary starvation, dehydration, and cooking in saunas or hot baths, all while training – is the most difficult part of the sport. In the hopes of expanding awareness of how painful and dangerous the process can be, every other Sunday, we will speak to an active or retired fighter about their biggest struggle to cut weight for a fight or healthy practices to do so. The first interviewee is Timothy Bradley Jnr, a Hall of Famer who has only ever lost to the great Manny Pacquiao, defeated Juan Manuel Marquez, and edged out Ruslan Provodnikov in the best and most violent fight of 2013. This is his experience struggling to make weight.

Timothy Bradley doesn’t remember the opponent, but he can describe the weight cut in excruciating detail.

He was trying to force himself down to 136lbs for a fight in Lancaster, California (which BoxRec indicates came against Jesus Abel Santiago). He didn’t have a nutritionist or a road map for how to lose weight. So he depleted himself.

“I was starving for three days, four days,” Bradley told BoxingScene. “Starving. I didn’t drink no water for three or four days. I was still having to run and train and try to shake off whatever’s left.”

Cutting weight gets progressively more difficult as the fighter gets closer to their weight goal. The last few pounds, when the fighter is already ripped and dehydrated, are blood from a stone.

“It comes to a point when your body stops releasing anything,” Bradley said. “You get stomach cramps. Your leg starts to cramp up on you. You feel like you can’t think. You have this massive headache because you’re dehydrated.”

On the drive to Lancaster, Bradley tucked himself into a ball in the backseat of his father’s car, wracked with pain.

“Felt like I needed to throw up, but there was nothing in my system,” Bradley said. “It was the worst feeling. I felt like I was close to death. If that’s the way starvation feels, I don’t ever want to feel that in my life. It was the most pain I’ve ever felt in any weigh-in I have ever been in.”

He felt no better on the scale.

“I felt dizzy. I couldn’t stand up by myself. I couldn’t stand straight up. I was crouched over, because my stomach was cramping so bad. It felt like my body was basically eating itself. I got on the scale, I made the weight, I felt like I was gonna collapse. It felt almost like everything was gonna seize up.”

Bradley jumped off the scale and drank some Pedialyte to mitigate his dehydration. Then he began eating everything he could get his hands on.

“I ate my food, I ate my pizza, I crammed down everything, because my body was craving any kind of sugar, any kind of nutrients. I downed everything. I mean, shoot, I think I had gained twenty-something pounds between weigh-in and fight.”

Fans often deride fighters who gain so much weight after a weigh-in. Now you know why some of them do it.

By the time of the fight, thoughts of the weigh-in are usually long gone from the minds of observers. But a bad weight cut can take its toll even inside the ring.

Bradley felt smooth for the first two rounds of his eight-round fight with Santiago, then a bit tired in the third.

“Fourth round hits, and I hit a wall,” Bradley recalled. “I can barely move. I can barely breathe. My heart rate elevated because I was still dehydrated, even though I drank water. I started to cramp up in the fight. I started holding, and grabbing, and just trying to survive.”

At that point, all of Bradley’s training seemed irrelevant. 

“You feel weak. You feel like you didn’t train for a fight. You feel like you didn’t even have a camp for a fight. You feel like you’re out of shape. It’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt. The stomach cramps came back, the headache came back, it was a fight for survival and a fight to try to win, at the same time.”

Bradley somehow stopped Santiago in the sixth round.

Boxing markets itself as a mano-a-mano fight inside the ropes. Really, the war begins earlier.

“Who can tear their body down and be at their very best the night of the fight?” Bradley said. “That’s what we do. We tear our body down. We weaken ourselves. And then get in the ring the next day. And whoever can replenish what they lost, whoever can take the right supplements and eat the right foods beforehand, is gonna have an advantage.

“And that’s the reason I went vegan.”

A vegan diet cuts out not only any kind of meat, but anything sourced from animals. That includes eggs, cow milk, honey, and many more foods. Bradley tried his hand at the diet, cutting out foods that took a long time to digest, and saw fast returns.

“It was easier for me to make weight,” Bradley said. “I had fuel right away in my system, because everything burns so rapidly. I didn’t eat meat or anything like that when training, because it takes too long to digest. You eat a piece of pork or piece of steak or something like that, you’re talking about two, three days before that’s fully digested. Your system is constantly burning, trying to burn that off, and get it into your digestive tract and push it out.”

With a vegan diet, Bradley had more energy than he knew what to do with. 

“Instant carbohydrates. You put high-octane fuel into your system. Some days, man, I had to meditate to try to go to bed. I had a full day, training three times that day, and I’m still fueled and ready. I was up, I was so alert when I was vegan.”

Bradley isn’t the only one a vegan diet has helped. Last month, BoxingScene spoke to Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington several days before his bout with Enrique Vivas. Carrington is on a plant-based diet and was so ahead of schedule with his weight cut that he joked, “I low-key have to slow it down with cutting weight, to be honest.”

It doesn’t work for everyone – Saul “Canelo” Alvarez abandoned the diet after his low-energy loss to Dmitry Bivol, and Bradley did reintegrate small portions of meat into his meals late in his career after some injuries. 

Bradley missed plenty of food while on a vegan diet, too. “I’m a huge pasta guy, I’m a huge sushi guy. To be honest with you, I’m a huge everything guy.” When his family had barbecues, Bradley had to settle for a vegetable skewer as those around him dined on steak and chicken. (“Be for real, bruh!” Bradley laughed.)

But the vegan diet was a net positive for Bradley, and he encourages fighters to try it if they think it could help them – with professional guidance.

Bradley’s career contains a remarkable amount of adversity even by pugilistic standards. Miguel Vazquez broke his rib in the second round of their 2007 fight. Intent on not showing weakness, Bradley would punch, clinch, and practically sob onto his opponent’s shoulder from the agony. Diego Gabriel Chaves broke his eye socket. He injured his foot while fighting Manny Pacquiao the first time and did his press conference from a wheelchair. Ruslan Provodnikov had him out on his feet in the first round, and Bradley fought another 11 rounds. “I’ve been through the wringer,” Bradley said.

Even after all of that, more physical pain than most people will experience in their lifetimes, Bradley landed on that harrowing weight cut in 2006 as what felt closest to death.