Dana White seems like he is making excuses for the unlucky event where Charles Oliveira didn’t make the requested weight by half a pound. To be honest, it is pretty unbelievable by itself. A professional like Charles Oliveira to make such an omission and not come ready for the weighting.
I am confident that he measured and re-measured his weight on a calibrated scale before coming to the UFC official scale many times. However, this time the unwilling event passed without any re-measuring on a different scale. Moreover, without re-checking the scale. As a result, he got stripped of his title.
UFC Scales Will Be Guarded By Security From Now On – Dana White Decides
Nevertheless, even without a title at stake, he proves to the world once again that he is a much better fighter than his opponent, and still the best lightweight UFC fighter. As a consequence, now Dana White feels like he ‘betrayed’ the UFC fans. He is now looking to implement some sort of a preventive measure, to make sure that the scales are on point.
The measure that he thought of is a security guard to stay next to the scale. He is to stay there from the moment of the scale’s calibration the day before and until the official weightings. This will make sure that nobody was ‘messing around’ with it in the meantime.
“We have this issue where guys come out and they’ll start checking the scale the night before. And all the Europeans and guys from other parts of the world do kilos. So they all start fucking with the scale to look at kilos. And, who knows… There are so many moving parts to this beast of a machine that we run every week, and we’ve got to have a security guard in there where the scale is now. It’s something we’re going to have to do.” – Dana says to the reporters.
Charles Oliviera on the other side is sure that he made the weight the night before. He swears that the night before the weighing he measured on a calibrated digital scale and his weight did not overcome the upper limit. However, there is a surprise laying ahead for the titleless champion. In the morning he re-measures and finds out he is 2 pounds over the limit. As soon as he finds this out he takes measures to cut weight again. And according to him, he did.
The Arizona State Boxing and MMA commission did come out with a statement as well. They felt guilty and needed to clear the air.
“The official scale was calibrated correctly. We as professionals make sure of this before every event that involves weight measuring. However, any scales used for any purpose other than official weigh-ins, such as those that may be used for fighters to unofficially test their weight are not calibrated or inspected by commission staff as they are typically provided by the promoter.” – the official says.
The UFC on the other side implements double standards for different fighters. Do you remember when Khabib Nurmagomedov fought Al Iaquinta back at UFC 223? Al Iaquinta had a promise to have a title if he wins the bout, despite his weight miss.
Regardless of everything, Charles, you are the people’s champion! So there is that!
