Charles Oliveira’s weight miss for his UFC 274 lightweight title fight against Justin Gaethje has become a thing of legend and is still being talked about nearly a month after the fact. The conversation now includes former UFC lightweight title challenger Dustin Poirier, who believes “Do Bronx” could have done a little more to cut the remaining weight.
In case you’ve been traveling the world for the past four weeks, Oliveira ended up missing weight by a half pound for his lightweight title defense against “Highlight” at UFC 274 this past May. Oliveira was given an extra two hours to cut the remaining weight, but he wasn’t able to knock any additional pounds off. As a result, Oliveira was stripped of his 155-pound title and ineligible to win it at UFC 274. “Do Bronx” ended up finishing Gaethje with a first-round submission, but left the arena without his lightweight title.
Oliveira believes that there was an issue with the scale and that he had successfully made weight behind the scenes only to be surprised when it came time for his official weigh in. It has created some cause for concern, especially when it comes to how a fighter is weighed in, and Poirier believes it’s time for a change.
“We need to be on digital scales so there’s no grey area,” Poirier said on THE FIGHT with Teddy Atlas. “You can’t have a guy there tapping a weight-balance scale and it’s kind of balancing, and he just says it’s a half pound or whatever. We need exact numbers. You get on a digital scale, it shows up on the screen, that’s your actual weight. I don’t like the fact that these guys are tapping this balance scale.”
As for Oliveira’s weight miss, Poirier believes the lightweight king could have done a little more to drop the final half pound in crunch time. After seeing Oliveira initially miss weight the MMA community assumed the veteran fighter would exhaust all options to come back on weight. Some even suggested that Oliveira shave his head to hit the 155-pound mark.
Unfortunately, “Do Bronx” wasn’t able to cut any more weight and was eventually stripped of his belt. It left a sour taste in Poirier’s mouth as “Diamond” believes Oliveira could have done a little more to make it happen.
“They weren’t carrying him out,” Poirier said. “He wasn’t stumbling around. He’s always really lean, and he’s long and tall, so he looks slim. He’s a big guy, but he didn’t look like he needed to be helped. He still had life in his body. He could have, it looked like, tried to lose more weight. It’s a championship fight.”
Whether you agree with Poirier or not Oliveira still missed weight for a UFC title defense and needed to be penalized for doing so. Oliveira ended up winning once again and will have a chance to win his title back in his next Octagon appearance, but hopefully the lesson was learned and history doesn’t repeat itself moving forward.