Sauna in Aichi-Nagoya: When the Scale Takes a Fighter Down Before the Opponent Does

For nearly forty-five years of covering combat sports, I have seen many fighters fall on the canvas. But only this week did I hear of someone collapsing in a sauna—while preparing for a quarterfinal at a multi-sport Games.

That is the story of Sanyal, an Indian MMA fighter at the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya. According to the Indian Express, Sanyal was given a first-round bye into the men's under-77kg quarterfinal, paired against Bahrain's Mukhammad Nabiev on the evening of September 20. But instead of stepping into the cage, he was hospitalised. The night before competition, to bring his body down to the weight limit, Sanyal restricted food and fluids, then spent roughly thirty minutes in a sauna. In the heat he grew dizzy, vertiginous, cramping throughout his body, then lost consciousness. A Nepali athlete found him and woke him.

I read that line and sat quietly for a long time. Every season has its own heartbeat, if you are willing to listen. And this heartbeat came from an old, old object: the scale.

Context: a fight that never started

The men's under-77kg category at Aichi-Nagoya is billed as "traditional MMA"—a label implying a Games-format variant rather than a professional promotion. This matters, because weigh-in rules and testing methods in a Games format differ completely from major professional leagues. General readers often cannot tell the difference, and that gap raises questions the Vietnamese martial arts community should also confront.

Sanyal entered the tournament with a rare advantage: a first-round bye. He fought no bout before the quarterfinal, while other fighters spent energy. His opponent, Mukhammad Nabiev of Bahrain, represented a rising Gulf MMA scene. The bout was scheduled for the evening of September 20—hours after earlier contests, with weigh-in timing set either that afternoon or the previous evening depending on rules the original report does not specify.

What the original report does specify: at least ten hours earlier, Sanyal had run into a series of logistics problems. His name was missing from the delegation's accommodation system, costing him more than ten hours of travel and waiting. During that stretch he barely ate. In other words, by the time he entered the sauna to cut weight, his body was already under-fuelled and dehydrated.

But to be fair: the original report stresses there is no medical evidence that logistics directly caused the incident. The confirmed causal chain has only two links: food and fluid restriction plus sauna, leading to symptoms. Logistics were a compounding stressor, not a proven cause.

The stakeholders that day formed a whole chain: the Olympic Council of Asia and the Aichi-Nagoya organisers, the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), the Indian MMA Federation, and on the other side the Bahrain delegation. After leaving the sauna in an unstable state, Sanyal personally phoned the president of the Indian MMA Federation. He was taken for emergency care and given a preventive blood test. Initial results showed "no significant abnormalities". After discussing with his coach, he decided to withdraw and was declared unfit.

A clear distinction is needed: this was a withdrawal, not a weigh-in miss. The two are entirely different. One is a rules violation; the other is the loss of a competitive opportunity for medical reasons. Sanyal was not disciplined, stripped of standing, or blacklisted. He simply could not fight.

Core analysis: when the weight-cut process becomes the real fight

There is a truth I have long wanted to tell younger readers: in modern combat sports, a fighter's biggest opponent is often not the person across the cage. It is the scale. And in Aichi-Nagoya, the scale won.

What is being policed is the endpoint of the process, not the process itself. The current system permits a fighter to fast, restrict fluids, enter a sauna, and drive the body to the weight limit—then rehydrate and refuel after the scale to enter the bout at a much heavier mass. The problem: the rules only watch the scale at weigh-in, not how a fighter treated his body in the twenty-four hours before. That is a structural flaw, not the fault of one individual.

The figure the original report cites caught my attention above all: a 2026 International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) survey found 79% of surveyed fighters used fluid restriction to cut weight, and 51% used saunas. More than three-quarters restricted fluids. More than half used saunas. This is no longer the story of one man on one afternoon—it is a training culture baked into the survival instinct of a profession.

Physiologically, the mechanism is no mystery. Fasting and fluid restriction reduce blood volume. In the sauna, the body keeps losing water through sweat without replenishment. Falling blood volume impairs thermoregulation and disrupts electrolytes. The result is dizziness, vertigo, cramps, and—once dehydration runs deep enough—syncope. Exactly what happened to Sanyal.

The PubMed data the original report cites worries me further. Studies show creatinine and blood-urea markers often rise after rapid weight loss. That means: a normal blood test that day is not enough to close the file. Weight-cut kidney stress can arrive late, beyond an initial baseline draw. That is why post-event follow-up—repeat renal tests, neurological observation—is not excessive caution but correct clinical standard.

One more detail made me stop writing. Before the bout, Sanyal's body was already under-fuelled by a gruelling journey and lack of food. When the body starts with less glycogen and less water, the same technique becomes far more dangerous. Physiological studies have made this clear: cutting weight when the body is already depleted is far more toxic than in a fully supplied camp. The original report notes this is a compounding factor, not a proven direct cause. That caution is exactly what I respect in reporting.

The next day, one piece of information left me uneasy: the difference between two descriptions of the same event. The Indian Olympic Association's official statement described Sanyal as experiencing "cramps and body aches". The sourced Indian Express account confirmed he lost consciousness. Two levels of severity were relayed to the public about the same afternoon. That gap reminded me of a line I often tell younger colleagues: "People remember the goals; I remember the sighs behind the goal."

I recalled an evening in 2026 in St. Petersburg. That night I mispronounced Eden Hazard's name, and viewers criticised me bluntly online. I reviewed all the footage, noted the phonetics of twenty-three players from both teams, and practised until dawn. St. Petersburg taught me that stumbling is the fastest way to learn to walk. With Sanyal, that "normal" blood test may be playing a similar trick on readers—it soothes, but it is not enough to believe.

The counter-intuitive angle: a bye is not always an advantage

There is a point I consider more thought-provoking than any other, and it runs against common intuition: a first-round bye was not a pure advantage in this context. It inadvertently added pressure to the weight cut.

People usually see a bye as a gift: one fewer fight, fresher legs. That is true physically. But from a weight-cut perspective, a bye means the fighter enters the quarterfinal with exactly one fixed deadline for weigh-in, with no preliminary bout to test and adjust the body beforehand. In professional formats, fighters can fine-tune across bouts in a programme. Here, Sanyal had to complete the cut in one pass, on time, with no fallback.

This is where the original report is right: a bye is usually a competitive and recovery advantage, but combined with a fixed date it intensifies the time pressure of the cut, neutralising the bye's benefit. The gift turns into a deadline.

Another question deserves raising: whether under-77kg is truly a physically appropriate class for Sanyal. If driving the body to that limit is this hazardous, there may be a somatic mismatch with the class. I lack the data to conclude, but this is a question the coaching staff and federation should revisit together. My nineteen-year-old midfielder at Khatoco Khanh Hoa in 2026—Nguyen Dinh Bao—ran 1.2km more per match than the previous season after being repositioned. Placing the right role, the right weight, the right biological age is a career survival matter.

One more thing: MMA at a Games with a "traditional" label implies a regulated, amateur-flavoured weigh-in regime that may lack the medical-supervision depth of top professional promotions. There is no evidence Aichi-Nagoya lacked medical care—but neither is there any description of the specific weigh-in testing method. That is an information gap readers should know about.

From Nha Trang: not just an Indian story

In Nha Trang, I once sat watching the empty 19/8 Stadium in 2026, when the pandemic suspended V.League indefinitely and Khanh Hoa players went four months without pay. I knew some drove ride-hailing bikes to feed their families. I chose not to expose their hardship. I interviewed each one and wrote the series "The Days of the Team I Love", and a local tourism company sponsored VND 3 billion. The team survived relegation. "The stadium had no fans, but I heard applause from those who did not give up."

I tell that story not to talk about myself. I tell it to say this: people only learn about weight cuts when someone collapses. Before that, it is a silent ritual the whole fight world knows, accepts, and treats as normal. In the small gyms of Vietnam, every season dozens of fighters in a weight class fast, run in weighted vests, and sit in saunas. When no one collapses, it is treated as routine.

Here lies the quiet star that never goes out: the silence surrounding those weight cuts. The silence of coaches who will not speak, fighters who will not tell, tournaments that will not record. When a Nepali athlete found Sanyal unconscious in the sauna, that was not a sign of a strong medical system—it was a sign of a system where safety is entrusted to luck.

A different standard is needed: test hydration, not just weight

I am not an official of an international federation. I am a 61-year-old reporter in Nha Trang who writes after verification. But from that position, one thing is clear: the real debate is not whether Sanyal deserves sympathy. It is what we will do about the structural flaw.

The most notable reference model is hydration testing at the moment of weigh-in, rather than weight alone. If fighters must prove stable hydration before stepping on the scale—rather than merely hitting a number—deep fluid restriction becomes tactically meaningless. This is the reform direction many major professional leagues have adopted. Whether Aichi-Nagoya is applying it, the original report does not say. And that is precisely the question the combat sports world should answer more clearly.

Alongside that, the "format label" problem must be confronted directly. When MMA enters a multi-sport Games under a variant designation, weight and medical-supervision regulations must be correspondingly transparent. A fighter entering a Games quarterfinal with an unvalidated rush weight cut means his condition, not his skill, controls the outcome. That is the kind of sporting injustice true fans do not want to see.

On the Indian side, the IOA carried medical and communications duty: preventive blood test, official statement. The Indian MMA Federation carried camp and entry duties. Responsibility is split, and both sides described the same event with different shades. That is no small matter. When medical information is softened by one side and hardened by another, learning from the incident becomes harder for the entire industry.

I have thought about this since my trip to Russia in 2026. The stumble in St. Petersburg taught me that accuracy is not a personal matter—it is a system matter. Readers trust the name I pronounce correctly, the number I record correctly, the fact I verify sufficiently. In combat sports, accuracy about weight and accuracy about health are the same kind of responsibility. Otherwise, we are merely recounting the number of people who fall.

A transfer is not just a number, but a wordless farewell. Here too. A withdrawal is not just a news line—it is a lost opportunity, a postponed dream, a body pushed to its limit. I did not want to write about Sanyal in haste. I want to write slowly because I want to remember for a long time, like the person keeping the beat for the whole pitch.

What to watch next

Whether Sanyal fully recovers, and whether he receives renal and neurological follow-up in the coming weeks, is not stated in the original report. Whether the Indian MMA Federation reviews its weight-management guidance is also unclear. Whether the Aichi-Nagoya organisers record this as a medical emergency under Games protocol is even less clear.

Every season has its own heartbeat, if you are willing to listen. And the beat I hear from Aichi-Nagoya is slowing at the spot where a young fighter—who should have stepped into the cage—stood alone in a sauna, before any bell had a chance to ring. Esports too has seasons, stoppage time, and quiet people who make history. Combat sports are the same—but we must ensure those quiet people are not the first to fall.

I will keep following Sanyal and Mukhammad Nabiev, watching how the federation handles the aftermath, and whether Aichi-Nagoya opens a review of weigh-in procedure for the men's under-77kg class. If it does, that will be the first positive signal in years. If not, this story will sit in my notebook again, waiting for another season, when a different heartbeat sounds—and perhaps another sigh behind the goal.