Photo by Christian Petersen/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC
While tomorrow’s main event bout between Conor McGregor and Donald Cerrone will go on as planned, UFC 246 was dealt a big blow earlier today during official weigh ins (full replay HERE) when Alexa Grasso missed weight by 5.5 pounds for her main card clash with women’s strawweight contender Claudia Gadelha.
As a result of the botched weigh in, Gadelha’s matchup with Grasso has been completely removed from UFC 246’s fight card.
It’s an unfortunate situation for both fighters, but especially for Gadelha. The former women’s strawweight title challenger had done everything right in her camp leading up to this fight and was hoping to take out Grasso to regain her footing in the 115-pound division. Not to mention the fact that the Brazilian fighter was arguably in the biggest spot of her career fighting on the main card of a Conor McGregor PPV event.
Gadelha, who is coming off a win over Randa Markos this past July, released the following message to her fans (via Instagram) after learning about her UFC 246 removal:
“I worked so hard for this, and I was so excited to put (on) a show for you all tomorrow, but unfortunately my fight isn’t gonna happen because my opponent missed weight by 5.5 pounds,” Gadelha wrote. “I still wanted the fight because I am a bad bitch, but Nevada Commission didn’t (allow) the fight to happen.”
It’s nice to know that Gadelha lobbied for the fight to remain on the UFC 246 main card, but 5.5 pounds is a lot of weight to overlook. Grasso simply did not do her job and gave the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) little wiggle room with their decision. It would have been nice to see the two strawweights let loose on one of the biggest cards of 2020 but we’ll now have to wait to see that matchup at another point in time.
UFC 246 will take place on Jan. 18 live on ESPN+ PPV from inside T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, with former UFC champions Anthony Pettis and Holly Holm also gracing the main card.
MMAmania.com will deliver LIVE round-by-round, blow-by-blow coverage of the entire UFC 246 fight card this weekend RIGHT HERE, starting with the Fight Pass/ESPN+ “Prelims” matches online, which are scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. ET, then the remaining undercard balance on ESPN at 8 p.m. ET, before the PPV main card start time at 10 p.m. ET on ESPN+.