UFC president Dana White has revealed that the UFC is going to scrap the early weigh-in system that the promotion has been utilizing in recent times.
Bringing the weigh-ins forward by several hours had been implemented as a way to enable fighters to have more time to recover and rehydrate after the weigh-cutting process, but in the end White agrees that it’s simply caused more problems, with multiple fighters having been forced out of fights at the last minute due to bad weigh-cuts.
“Yes, I do think it’s that, and guess what? We’re getting rid of it,” White said on the UFC Unfiltered podcast. “We’re looking at taking the weigh-ins back to the way they used to be. So when the guys weigh in there, at the (ceremonial weigh-ins), that will be it. That’ll be the real weigh-in.”
White went on to further explain why he feels the change hasn’t worked out as planned.
“Here’s what I believe. Any time you change something, everybody looks to take as much advantage as they can of the situation. I think that when we started doing morning weigh-ins, it was very good. Everybody was making weight, everything was great.
“But then people started cutting it closer and closer and closer, thinking they can put on more weight because they have more time to recover, and the reality is, it f**ked everything up. So we’re looking at going back to — at 4 p.m. PT — when we do the weigh-ins, those will be the real weigh-ins.
“The other thing is, I don’t know any fighters that are morning people. Most of them stay up half the night and sleep half the day, so that might have something to do with the morning weigh-ins too.”
