The bantamweight bout between former UFC women’s flyweight champion Nicco Montano and China’s Wu Yanan is off the UFC Vegas 33 card.
On Friday, during the event’s official weigh-in, a drained looking Montano stepped onto the scale, weighing in at 143lbs on her first and only attempt. That’s 7lbs over the non-title limit for the weight class, and adds to the troubled history the Arizona native has had since winning The Ultimate Fighter 26 in 2017.
Opponent Wu Yanan successfully made weight Friday morning, hitting the scales earlier in the weigh-in window at 135.5lbs.
The bout was later pulled from the weigh-in line-up found on the UFC’s official website, which had previously listed Montano’s weight miss.
Since winning TUF 26 and claiming the flyweight title, Montano has fought just once, at bantamweight, in a losing effort against Julianna Pena. Montano was stripped of her title after failing to defend it, the result of another weight cut gone wrong ahead of a scheduled 2018 fight with Valentina Shevchenko.
Shevchenko would go on the win the vacant championship against Joanna Jedrzejczyk later that year. Montano would return to the octagon in 2019, dropping a unanimous decision to the aforementioned Pena. From there, the ex-champ would see several fights fall through, in part due to COVID-19 issues with both her opponents, and after contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus herself.
Montano also pulled out of a fight against Karol Rosa earlier this year, for undisclosed reasons.
UFC Vegas 33 is set to take place Saturday, July 31 at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event is headlined by a middleweight bout featuring Uriah Hall and Sean Strickland.
Update, 5:25PM ET: Montano took to social media Friday afternoon to explain what happened.
I also want to say thank you to everyone at the UFC P.I. and Syndicate for believing in me and helping me get to this fight with more love and support than anyone could ask for. I truly felt the best I’ve ever felt going into this fight ❤️ pic.twitter.com/caZBtVUylh
— Nicco Montaño (@NiccoMontano) July 30, 2021
