How often were Professional Wrestlers weighed?

I recall Kent Walton for years describing Mick McManus as weighing 11st 10lb, when Southern Area Welterweight Champion. Suddenly, he became European Middleweight Champion and his weight shot up to a described12st 8lb, although he didn’t look a lot different.

I remember a farce of a billing at Preston Guild Hall around 1978, Ray Steel up against Marty Jones for his British Light Heavyweight title. Had there been a weigh-in, Steel would have been at least two stones overweight for the division. It was a cracking bout, Jones being the inevitable winner.

Robby Baron is a case in point. Nobody at Dale Martin's ever seemed to notice that he had shot upwards and outwards from being the Young Robby of 1966. They kept putting him with Julien Morice, Joe Murphy and other tiddlers. On The Generation Game, he had to stay bent over throughout to look like a fair match for Mick McManus.

Finally in the mid-seventies someone noticed and he found himself alongside heavyweight Viedor at the Albert Hall.

And then disappeared.

Thanks for the replies. In his commentaries Walton referred to a particular wrestler needing to train down or up to challenge for a title. As always attempting to give the appearance of a legit sport

A little tidbit from when I interviewed Johnny Kincaid: Meanwhile Johnny Kincaid points to Marino breaking tradition as a matchmaker. "He came up with the Caribbean Sunshine Boys name, which certainly helped my career. But one thing I really remember is that before then if you started out at a particular weight, you often stayed billed at that weight for the rest of your career, even if it looked silly when you piled on a few pounds and clearly weren't a welterweight any more. When Mike was matchmaking he gave me the chance to move up divisions and wrestle some of the bigger guys."

Promoters would look at a wrestler and guesstimate his weight , some never changed weight in 30 years according to Bill posters.

In the years that I wrestled; I can’t remember anybody being weighed before a bout.

As a heavyweight (I was 15 ½ stone) you were just taken for granted that you were a heavyweight, or against a lighter opponent it would be as SaxonWolf said, be a Catchweight contest.

I have posted this before but it may interest some of the newer visitors to this site.

I was with Norman Walsh after he had wrestled in Newcastle . One of the few times that he had to travel up to St James by train as he had car trouble.

We got to Newcastle Central station and he saw a weighing machine.

He thought it was a good idea to get weighed.

It turned out that he was a full stone over what he thought, going by the last time he weighed himself .

I don't remember him ever saying that he was weighed before any match, let alone a title fight and he had a few of those.

They probably got weighed in the bathroom, like most of us, after their wives said, "Bloody hell, you look like you added a few pounds, cut down on that beer!"

Joking aside, I think it went more on how you looked, than how much you weighed, plus there was always the usual get-out, of mismatching two wrestlers and calling it "catchweight".