Another day, another controversial UFC weigh-in.
Ahead of the promotion’s most recent attendance in Japan, to be headlined by a fairly uninteresting fight between Ovince Saint Preux and a returning Yushin Okami, drama unfolded on the scale.
Featherweight Mizuto Hirota, 1-3-1 in the UFC, arrived as the last to weigh in among athletes slated for the card and looked off from the moment he appeared from behind the curtain. Swaying slightly as he met the public, he shuffled to the scale and climbed on.
150 pounds.
It was an egregious miss in its own right, four pounds above the non-title featherweight limit, but it got worse from there.
Hirota, badly drained and looking a little aloof, resignedly took a second to ponder his miss before making a move to exit the scale. When he did, he quite evidently became temporarily overwhelmed and stumbled from the scale, saved from falling only by a pair of UFC overseers who caught him.
The whole scene was highly disconcerting for anyone who has followed the raging debate surrounding weight cutting in MMA over the years.
Despite the best efforts of commissions around North America, and of the UFC when governing its own events abroad, it continually appears as though the very sport itself is shuffling towards some extreme fate involving a fighter who has endured a bad weight cut.
Hirota is the most recent example, coming but a few weeks after Ray Borg was pulled from a title fight due to complications arising during his weight cut and after superstar Paige VanZant announced moving up in weight after passing out cutting to 115 pounds.
Adding insult to injury, Hirota will forfeit 30 percent of his purse to his opponent. Check out video of his weigh-in below.
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