Charles Oliveira has been campaigning hard to have his next title fight in Brazil – and after his experience on the scales prior to facing Arizona native Justin Gaethje – who can blame him.
Oliveira missed weight after the scale was reportedly ‘messed’ with. Here’s how Joe Rogan explained what transpired.
“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.”
UFC will be hiring a security guard for the scale – as per Dana White.
But Oliveira is not convinced it was unintentional. Recently Oliveira blamed the Arizona Athletic state commission and even went so far to want to make him ‘sad’.
Former UFC middleweight contender Chael Sonnen speculated about the possibility of Charles Oliveira losing a huge amount of money thanks to this error.
On his youtube Sonnen explained
“I could probably come up with, right here in front of you, about $2.3 million that that scale failure cost him. Just so you understand how participation works for defending a championship. You must understand that word – defending a championship.” Sonnen said.
Chael Sonnen also speculated that Oliveira’s bonus from PPV would’ve been roughly $1 million plus $50,000 estimated sponsorship money.
“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.”
But the ‘former’ champion didn’t let it get him all that down – soon after the fight he started selling merch featuring the 155.5 lbs – the weight he made prior to Gaethje fight.