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Juan Archuleta is responding to critics following his issues on the scales ahead of RIZIN 45.
Archuleta's weight miss has had the mixed martial arts world buzzing, with the now-former RFF bantamweight champ offering up a response. Archuleta said:
"Sorry this happened nothing I can do about getting sick. I did my best to make weight and still step on the scale knowing, I was going to have my title taken away. But I don’t want my fans who pay hard working money to miss this fight. So I did my best and came up short."
X user @achamo2017 then responsed:
"No, no, no. Just go home. You don't deserve to fight. The other fans may forgive you, but I don't."
Via his X account @jarchmma, Archuleta retorted to the disparaging comment by saying:
"Lol you must have never been sick before not something I can say like hey I don’t want to be sick I have weight cut don’t happen like that unfortunately."
Check out Archuleta's tweet on the NYE 2023 scale mishap below
Juan Archuleta and his 2023 MMA run
Per Bruno Massami, as of this writing, a confirmation on this Archuleta New Year's Eve bout has not been made.
Due to the weight miss, negotiations with Asakura have been ongoing. The RIZIN FF 135-pound belt is now vacant, and a few question marks linger as we are hours out from the combat sports extravaganza.
Throughout his overall run this calendar year, 'Spaniard' carved out quite the championship run with RIZIN FF. The 36-year-old bested Naoki Inoue via unanimous decision in May at RIZIN 42.
He also earned an across-the-board points win over Hiromasa Ougikubo at Super Rizin 2 in July. That was where Archuleta claimed the then vacant RIZIN bantamweight belt, but curiously enough was supposed to initially face Asakura.
The exciting KO artist received a knee injury which pulled Asakura from their planned July bout. With the backdrop of this weigh-ins situation, we could conceivably see this Archuleta vs Asakura matchup fallout twice inside the same calendar year.
