Charles Oliveira may have lost as much as $2million after missing weight and being stripped of his lightweight title.
Oliveira was set to put his 155lb crown on the line in Phoenix against Justin Gaethje last night, but weighed in half a pound over the limit and was unable to shed the extra mass after an extra hour. The fight went ahead with Oliveira choking out his rival to set up a shot at the vacant title in his next bout.
UFC legend Chael Sonnen believes a pay-per-view clause would have seen Oliveira drop $1million alone without the additional losses of sponsorship. "I could probably come up with, right here in front of you, about $2.3m that that scale fail cost him," Sonnen said on his YouTube channel when assessing UFC 274. "Just so you understand how participation works for defending a championship. You must understand that word - defending a championship.
"So you're talking about the exact same thing, just that sponsor money goes down. You're looking at another 30 grand... but also the pay-per-view clause, you're looking at another million bucks. Don't forget the escalation that would go into his built-in show fee. Does not happen."
Sonnen later added that the the Arizona State Boxing & MMA Commission would have taken away anything from 10-20 per cent of Oliveira's purse. The normal one pound leeway for non-title fights did not apply which saw the Brazilian stripped of the title he had held since last May.
UFC president Dana White confirmed after the event that security guards would be brought to the scales to prevent a repeat of the nightmare scenario. “We have this issue where guys come out and they’ll start checking the scale the night before and all the Europeans and guys from other parts of the world do kilos, so they all start f****** with the scale to look at kilos and, who knows,” White said.
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“There’s so many moving parts to this beast of a machine that we run every week, and we’ve got to have a security guard in there where the scale is now. It’s something we’re going to have to do.”
However despite the devastating blow ahead of the fight, Oliveira finished yet another opponent at 155lb to continue his sensational record-breaking career. He was delighted with his performance after the fight and believes he will still be regarded as the division's champion despite being forced to vacate.
"This is a message to the entire division; I am a problem for the entire division," he shouted after the fight. "I am enlightened, I am the champion, this is my title and it should be here. Dana White, I don't care [who I fight next], I'm not going to choose. Hey, Conor McGregor, are you going to come back or are you going to run away?"
