So let me set the stage. You are a fighter, a “professional fighter”, a promoter approaches you and says “hey you want to fight on my next card.” You think about it and ultimately decide, this could be a good opportunity. You never expect a no call – no show, so you reach back out to the promoter, and accept the fight, he has a good opponent for you and everything is a go. You spend your standard 6 to 8 weeks in fight camp, working out 2 maybe 3 times a day preparing for this opportunity, after all you’re a professional and you take this job seriously.
Along the way you give up a lot of luxuries, things such as eating junk, time with friends, and reduce your hours at your partime job so you can spend your time in the gym, so you put your best foot forward and you can prove your worth to your employer, the promotion, and set yourself up to get paid. Lets fast forward, it’s now three weeks out, it’s time for you to start cutting weight seriously, you want to make sure you set yourself up for success in the final week. You start drinking your gallon of water a day, you cut out all carbs and you’ve already cut out sugar, but this is what you do.
So now it’s the week of weigh-ins, this is the week you’ve still got 15 lbs to get off before you step on the scales, but you know your going to be fine because you’ve done everything in the last 2 months to set yourself up to make it. Now it’s day of weigh-ins, you haven’t slept much because yesterday you had only one small meal and haven’t had any water since dinner last night, but hey, your only 5 pounds out that’ll be easy to make, your body is used to the 3 gallons of water you’ve been drinking a day, and now your going to give it none, and on top of that you’re going to get in sauna and get as much of the water you have in your body out. You get out of the sauna, and hop on the scale you are right on… you almost broke today a couple of times, but you knew you were ready for success.
Well hey look at that just in time to go the official weigh ins. You head up, get on the scale and boom right on weight, you have won the hardest battle, you start re-hydrating and wait to see where your opponent weighs in at. After all you were a professional and did your job, hey if they don’t do theirs you may have an opportunity to make a little more cash, it’s common practice for fighters that miss weight to forfeit part of their purse to the other fighter, and you want to see how good this guy looks, does he look like he had a bad weight cut?, does he look small?, sick? these are all things that may affect your game. The promoter seems a little agitated, but hey it’s weigh in day he’s got a ton going on, collecting money, dealing with weight misses, not to mention he’s got a show to put on tomorrow, so you think nothing of it.
Weigh ins were at 5 and now here we are it 6:30 and your opponent still isn’t there, the commission is about to leave, now you start to worry after all look at what you’ve put in to get to today, but hey no one has said anything to you yet so he’s probably on his way, just running a little late. And then you ask the promoter, his response is something along the lines of, “Man, I’m not sure what is going on I can’t get a hold of him, hopefully he shows in the next few minutes, because if the commission leaves you won’t have a fight.”
This is when your heart sinks, you took the time, you sold tickets to all your friends and family, you put in all this work, and you were ready, you were going to destroy this kid and prove yourself, but now what you start to think?
Do I tell my friends and family? I mean they bought tickets to come see me fight, I can’t refund their tickets though, I already turned in my money and all the tickets, that’s not an option. But they are all going to be mad if they come to the fights and I don’t fight, but it’s not my fault, it’s not the promoters fault, my opponent just pulled a no call no show. What about my sponsors? They gave me money and support to get here, this was the payoff for them, I’d already prepared what I was going to say about their support when I got my hand raised, I hope they understand. And now what, do I look for a fight asap, or do I just go into regular training mode and wait for the next opportunity?
You’d be surprised how often this happens, I see a “professional” no call no show at least once ever 2-3 fights. And if I’m a promoter I notice those guys, and I never give them another opportunity, and I do everything in my power to make sure they don’t fight for anyone else either. Guys that do this to other competitors are the worst, and for the most part I believe they never took it seriously anyways.
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