Categories: MMA

Morning Report: Joe Rogan says Charles Oliveira ‘got screwed’ by UFC 274 weight situation

Joe Rogan thinks Charles Oliveira got screwed.

At UFC 274, Oliveira faced Justin Gaethje in what was supposed to be his second lightweight title defense, but there was one small problem: Oliveira didn’t make weight. The lightweight champion came in .5 pounds over the 155-pound weight limit and was unable to cut the necessary excess despite being given an additional hour to do so. As a result, Oliveira was stripped of his lightweight title, a UFC first. He still fought Gaethje at UFC 274, winning by first-round submission and now “Do Bronx” is no longer the champion and for UFC commentator Joe Rogan, that’s a raw deal.

“He got screwed in his last fight,” Rogan said on his podcast. “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**** up the whole calibration. So he weighed in the night before the weigh-ins, and he was like, ‘Oh, I’m good to go.’ 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.”

The issue of the scale has been a hotly debated topic since UFC 274. Following weigh-ins, several fighters noted having issues with the scale, including Oliveira who functionally blamed his weight miss on that. The issue, allegedly, was that the scale the UFC provides for fighters at their hotel, that is supposed to be calibrated to matched the official commission scale used for actual weigh-ins, did not match, thus creating weigh-in issues. UFC official Marc Ratner confirmed that there were no flaws with the official scale, but did conceded something like what Rogan is proposing could have happened with the hotel scale, and as Rogan notes, the UFC is now taking steps to prevent similar things from happening in the future.

“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. “They have shifts where no one can f*** 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.”

Claims that the scale were adjusted are impossible to confirm or deny at this point, and some have even suggested that it was Oliveira’s team who tinkered with the scale in the first place, causing the confusion. The fact remains though that of the 30 fighters competing on the card, only two missed weight, and Oliveira was given an extra hour to drop the half a pound and could not do so. Even so, many still feel like Oliveira got the short end of the stick as, were the fight not being held in Arizona, other commissions may not have had similar issues, and Rogan appears to be in that camp.

“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,” Rogan said. “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.”

Champion or not, Oliveira notched another impressive win at UFC 274 and, according to UFC President Dana White, his next fight will be for the vacant belt, though no opponent has been determined yet.


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FINAL THOUGHTS

Thanks for reading! See y’all tomorrow.


EXIT POLL


If you find something you’d like to see in the Morning Report, hit up @JedKMeshew on Twitter and let him know about it. Also follow MMAFighting on Instagram and like us on Facebook.

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