Joe Rogan sees the controversy in the weight miss that Charles Oliveira his UFC title.
Oliveira (33-8 MMA, 21-8 UFC) was stripped off his lightweight belt when he missed the 155-pound championship mark for his UFC 274 title fight against Justin Gaethje by 0.5 pounds in Phoenix earlier this month.
Despite the Arizona commission rules giving him an 60 minutes beyond the initial two-hour window, Oliveira still weighed in at 155.5 pounds on his second attempt, and as a result the strap became vacate. It came as a surprise to many, because Oliveira tweeted the night prior to weigh-ins that he was already at his required limit.
Information has since come to light that pre-check scale had been tampered with during fight week, and therefor it did not align with the official scale. UFC commentator Rogan expressed his disappointment in the situation.
“He’s a very, very nice guy, and he got screwed in his last fight,” Rogan said on a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast on Spotify. “There was some shenanigans with the scale. Some people had messed with the scale. Here’s a problem with these digital scales: Foreign fighters, they use kilograms and in America, obviously we use pounds.
“These scales are calibrated and then the foreign fighters would reset the scale so they could switch it back to kilograms. So it f*cks up the whole calibration. He weighed in the night before the weigh-ins, and he was like, ‘Oh, I’m good to go.’ And then in the morning, he goes and shows up for the weight cut, and it’s a pound plus off, and that is directly related to this calibration thing.”
As a result of the scale controversy, UFC president Dana White announced that moving forward, the promotion plans on having security to monitor the scale.
“Now the UFC has a new policy because of this, where they have a guard who watches over the scale 24 hours a day,” Rogan added. “Like, they have shifts where no one can f*ck with the scale. If you’re gonna get on that scale to try yourself, they’re gonna watch you like a hawk, and you don’t press any buttons. You just get on, what’s your weight, get off. That’s it. These guys were monkeying around with the scale.”
He continued, “It’s Phoenix. That’s what it is, and it’s not a knock on Phoenix. I love Phoenix. It’s just that the people that are there don’t do high-level world championship MMA fights on a regular basis. They do a few. We’ve had a good time there. They’ve had some good events there, but they just made a mistake. They’ll let these guys do it. There should have been someone watching the scale, and the scale was off, and that’s a fact. Look, it’s not the best excuse because Justin Gaethje made weight. Everybody else made weight except one of the women that fought earlier in the night, but that’s it.”
Oliveira ended up submitting Gaethje in the first round and with the lightweight title currently vacant, he will challenge for it in his next fight.
