UFC Sao Paulo’s main event is official, as both Jacare Souza and Jan Blachowicz have made weight for Saturday’s fight.
The UFC’s final visit to Brazil this year goes down Saturday, with UFC Sao Paulo featuring the light heavyweight debut of Jacare Souza. Polish contender and KSW veteran Jan Blachowicz will welcome him to the weight class, with the hopes that the winner would be an outlier for a potential title shot against Jon Jones.
Weigh-Ins for the event took place Friday morning. And not surprisingly, Jacare had no issues making the 205lb limit, given he was moving up from middleweight. In fact, both Souza and Blachowicz made championship weight Friday.
Results from Friday morning’s official weigh-in are below!
UFC Sao Paulo Weigh-In Results:
Main Card (ESPN+)
Light Heavyweight: Jan Błachowicz (205) vs. Ronaldo ‘Jacare’ Souza (205)
Light Heavyweight: Maurício ‘Shogun’ Rua (206) vs. Paul Craig (205)
Lightweight: Charles Oliveira (155) vs. Jared Gordon (156)
Middleweight: Antonio Arroyo (185) vs. Andre Muniz (186)
Middleweight: Markus Perez (186) vs. Wellington Turman (186)
Preliminary Card (ESPN+)
Welterweight: Sérgio Moraes (171) vs. James Krause (170.5)
Featherweight: Ricardo Ramos (146) vs. Luiz Eduardo Garagorri (145.5)
Lightweight: Francisco Trinaldo (155) vs. Bobby Green (156)
Welterweight: Warlley Alves (171) vs. Randy Brown (171)
Featherweight: Douglas Silva de Andrade (145.5) vs. Renan Barão (146)
Women’s Flyweight: Ariane Lipski (125.5) vs. Isabella de Padua (130.5)*
Women’s Bantamweight: Vanessa Melo (136.5) vs. Tracy Cortez (136.5)**
* de Padua, a short-notice replacement for Veronica Macedo, missed weight
** Both fighters missed weight, bout will proceed at a catchweight with no penalty
Update, 2:55PM ET — Per a statement by the CABMMA, an issue with the scale means that both Melo and Cortez actually made weight. Their statement, via MMA Fighting, can be found below.
CABMMA reviewed the incident between the athletes Vanessa Melo and Tracy Cortez. Both were checked by the commission with 20 minutes left to the ending time of the official weigh-ins. The scale used by the commission was 0.7 lbs above the official scale, which indicated that the athletes could not lose any more weight in the remaining time.
Athletes were then withdrawn from the cutting process.
CABMMA physicians evaluated the athletes and considered both to be in good condition but they were not given the extra hour, which per guidelines is only for main event and title bouts. Considering the fact that (i) fighters were checked on a scale which was not calibrated as the official one; (ii) commission was misguided by the wrong weight and conducted their guideline on incorrect data; and (iii) since the difference between the scales was off by 0.7 lbs and both athletes made the exact weight on the official scale, CABMMA will consider their official weight as 136 lbs.
In that sense, the athletes will not suffer any fine or penalty, and have their records maintained. To CABMMA’s understanding, weight classes are designed for safety and fairness, not a strict rule that prevents those goals.
