One fighter missed weight for UFC 332, and it happened on the main card.
Esteban Ribovics weighed in at 156.5 pounds for his lightweight bout against King Green. The fight proceeds at catchweight.
The Penalty
Yahoo reported that Ribovics forfeits 20 percent of his purse. Sherdog described it only as a percentage, so the exact figure is not settled. Penalty money normally goes to the opponent.
The overage is also imprecise in the reporting. The non-title lightweight limit is 155 pounds with a one-pound allowance for non-title fights, which puts the miss somewhere between one and one and a half pounds depending on which standard applies.
Small Miss, Real Consequences
A pound and a half does not sound like much, and it matters more than the number suggests. Green is 40 years old and 35-17-1, riding a four-fight win streak at a stage of his career when most fighters have stopped winning anything.
He prepared for a lightweight. He gets a man who could not make lightweight, on fight week, with no say in the matter beyond accepting a cut of the purse.
Ribovics is 16-3 and reportedly 5-3 in the UFC. He is the younger fighter, the one with the upside, and the one who showed up heavy on the UFC’s first main card on CBS. That timing is its own small embarrassment.
Everyone Else Made It
The rest of the card was clean. Natalia Silva hit 125 and Wang Cong came in at 124.5, so the vacant women’s flyweight title fight is official. Deiveson Figueiredo weighed 135 and Payton Talbott 135.5, both inside the allowance for their non-title co-main.
Thirteen of 14 fights made weight without issue, which is a better rate than most cards manage.
What It Does to the Fight
Here is the honest handicap. Weight misses cut both ways. A fighter carrying extra pounds into the cage may be stronger in the clinch and worse in the third round, because the reason he missed is usually that the cut went badly and the rehydration will go worse.
Green has been in 53 professional fights. He knows how to wait. If Ribovics is heavy because his camp mismanaged the final week, the 40-year-old veteran is the last opponent you want standing across from you in the back half of a 15-minute fight.
That said, Ribovics has the sharper offense and the better recent form at range, and a pound of extra mass does not change a striking matchup much in round one.
What Nobody Has Confirmed
The exact overage remains unclear. It has not been reported who receives the forfeited purse share, and Green’s camp has not publicly objected to the catchweight.
The fight is on. It happens Saturday at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, on the main card, with one man a pound and a half heavier than he promised to be.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.