As the UFC 300 weigh-ins loom, Chael Sonnen suggests Charles Oliveira may not make weight for his lightweight contender bout against Arman Tsarukyan.
Chael Sonnen is sounding the alarm bells on Charles Oliveira’s UFC 300 weight cut.
The official UFC 300 weigh-ins kick off at 12 p.m. ET (9 a.m. PT), and on a new episode of his Good Guy / Bad Guy show with Daniel Cormier, Chael Sonnen claims he’s been hearing rumblings of a problem from Team “Do Bronx” coming into their main card fight against Arman Tsarukyan.
“I will offer you this one thing, little piece of inside baseball, we’ll see how it works out,” Sonnen said. “Right now with team Oliveira, their biggest concern is not Saturday. They’ve got one opponent first and this opponent’s beaten them before, several times, and that is the scale.”
“Right now they are getting some weight off and they are a little bit worried about their athlete,” he continued. “It’s a very big deal. This is arguably a number one contendership fight, and just to remind you, Dana White will not allow you to fight for the title next off of previously missing the weight class. So it could have some implications.”
Back when Oliveira was fighting at featherweight, he missed weight four times — the last by a whopping nine pounds. He’s only missed the lightweight limit once, but it was a doozy. When he was supposed to defend his belt against Justin Gaethje at UFC 297, Oliveira missed championship weight by half a pound and was stripped of the title as a result.
This is not a championship match, so Oliveira only has to hit 156 pounds to make weight. Here’s hoping he does, because the UFC will have a list of lightweight contenders to choose from after UFC 300, and they ain’t choosing a guy who missed weight to fight for the next title. Chael is right on that point.
Is he right with his inside baseball information? “The American Gangster” has been known to never let the truth get in the way of a good story, but this isn’t just something he’s saying on his own YouTube channel. This is on his new ESPN program, where he may take his batting average a little more seriously.
All will be revealed in the next several hours when “Do Bronx” steps on the scale. We’ll keep you up to date on the latest developments.
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