In light of Charles Oliveira’s UFC 274 weigh-in fiasco, Dustin Poirier calls for a change from mechanical to digital scales.
Nearly a month since it happened, Charles Oliveira’s UFC 274 weight miss is still relatively fresh in everyone’s minds. Recently, his former challenger Dustin Poirier was asked about it in an episode of Teddy Atlas’ The Fight podcast, and he wants to see major changes, particularly with the primary tool that’s been used since the beginning.
“We need to be on digital scales so there’s no gray area, right? You can’t have a guy there tapping a weight balance scale and is, kind of, balancing and he just says it’s a half-pound or whatever. We need exact numbers,” he said.
“You get on a digital scale, it shows up on the screen. That’s it, your actual weight. I don’t like the fact that these guys are tapping this balance scale.”
Oliviera does have a history of missing the mark back when he was a featherweight, but Poirier says this incident was still a bit surprising.
“I was kind of surprised when he came in a little over, but maybe they misjudged some things or the scale was different back in the locker room. I don’t know.
“I thought that in an hour’s time, he’d come back and be on weight, especially in a championship fight. I thought he was gonna lose that half-pound.”
“Do Bronx” did have an hour to cut the remaining half-pound and failed to do so. And judging by his demeanor during the second chance he had at the early weigh-ins, Poirier says the Brazilian could probably have done more.
“It didn’t seem that way, ‘cause they weren’t carrying him out. He wasn’t stumbling around, he didn’t look like… he’s always really lean, and he’s long and tall, so he looks slim,” he said.
“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’ve — it looked like — tried to lose more weight.”
Despite the weight miss that resulted in the stripping of his title, Oliveira impressively got the job done via first-round submission. According to UFC president Dana White, he is automatically a title contender for the vacant belt.