Charles Oliveira insists he weighed 155lb on Thursday night, hours before he scaled 155.5lb for his lightweight title fight with Justin Gaethje.
Oliveira was due to defend his belt at UFC 274 tonight but weighed in half a pound over the limit on Friday morning. He was unable to lose the extra weight in the extra hour-long window and will now be stripped of his title.
Only Gaethje can win the belt with victory tonight but if Oliveira wins, he will be matched with a leading contender for the vacant title later this year. The Brazilian, however, insists he remains the champion.
“The champion has a name. His name is Charles Oliveira,” he said. “The story is that I went up to my room. I made weight on the UFC scale on Thursday night. I go up to my room (and) didn’t consume anything. No water, no food, no anything. I swear to God. In the name of my daughter, the most sacred thing in my life. I went to bed. I wake up the following day and it’s a pound over.
"I’m looking at it. I’m one kilogram over, actually. I’m one over and I don’t understand what happened. I can’t understand. We work. We’re professionals. I didn’t do anything wrong. To me, it just didn’t make sense. Other fighters started talking about it as well. They started talking about those 200 grams, 300 grams. It was exactly the difference of the scale with the UFC. This is what we’re going back to. The champion has a name. His name is Charles Oliveira."
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Conspiracy theories were immediately floated which suggested the test scale used by fighters before the official weigh-in was "messed up ". But Gaethje dismissed the claim as "bulls***" and noted that three of the four fighters involved in title fights made weight.
The challenger said after weighing in: "That s*** doesn't matter, it's not going to affect one thing tomorrow night. I'm here to knock him out and I was here to knock him out before he didn't make weight. I think its f***ing ridiculous but here I am, I'm going to knock his a** out."
