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UFC lightweight champion Charles Oliveira has been stripped of his title after missing weight.
Oliveira is set to defend his title against Justin Gaethje at UFC 274, and while the fight will continue as planned, he will not be eligible to win his title back. Only Justin Gaethje can win the vacant title on fight night.
This is a major disaster for Charles Oliveira, who decided to show up for the UFC 274 weigh-ins two hours late and just five minutes before the commissions stopped allowing fighters to step on the scale. He then weighed in at 156 pounds. No extra pound is allowed in championship fights, so Oliveira was officially a pound overweight.
A modesty box was brought out so Oliveira could strip naked and weigh in again. This time he weighed 155.5 lbs. The commission gave him one hour to lose the extra half pound. However, at the end of the hour Oliveira returned to the scale and was still a half pound overweight. As a result, the UFC stripped him of his title.
All signs point to this being a major miscalculation by Oliveira and his team. His coaches had told the press that Oliveira was already at 155 pounds the night before weigh-ins, and as the scales opened at 9 AM in Phoenix, Arizona, Oliveira tweeted that he was on weight.
Charles Oliveira is the first UFC champion to ever miss weight in a championship fight
Charles Oliveira now makes dubious history, becoming the only fighter in UFC history to miss weight as a champion for a championship fight.
Former women's flyweight champion Nicco Montano was once forced to withdraw from a fight due to a botched weight cut and was stripped of her title. Daniel Cormier also came close to missing weight in his light heavyweight title fight against Anthony Johnson, but held onto a modesty towel to cheat the scale.
Charles Oliveira has also struggled with his weight in the past when he was a featherweight. He missed weight by half a pound for his UFC 152 fight against Cub Swanson in September 2012, and again in December 2014 for his fight with Jeremy Stephens. In December 2015, Oliveira missed weight by 4.5 pounds for his bout against Myles Jury.
In an even more shocking flub, he missed weight by nine pounds in his fight against Ricardo Lamas in November 2016. The UFC then forced Oliveira to move to lightweight, where he hasn't missed weight until this unfortunate situation at UFC 274.
