Israel Adesanya's fight with Alex Pereira is official after the challenger made weight just five minutes before the deadline after a gruelling cut from 232lb.
The champion Adesanya arrived on the scales at 185lb early in today's official weigh-in, but Pereira struggled to get down to 184.6lb after ballooning to well into heavyweight territory as recently as August. He shared a photo to social media showing himself on the scales at 105.6kg, which is just under 233lb, which is more than three stone over the middleweight limit.
New York Commission officials would have allowed him a further two hours to make the weight, but fortunately he was able to get in under the limit to confirm his bout with Adesanya. The meeting is just his eighth MMA fight, but he holds two victories over Adesanya in kick-boxing including a vicious knockout.
Ryan Span and Mike Trizano, both fighting on the prelim card against Dominick Reyes and Seungwoo Choi respectively, missed weight for their fights. Span was 0.6lb over the light-heavyweight limit, while Trizano was 1.6lb over featherweight, meaning both will still fight although they are being fined 20 per cent of their purses.
Luckily for the UFC, their event would have continued regardless with a host of massive fights, including a barn-burner between Michael Chandler and Dustin Poirier and a co-main event featuring Carla Esparza defending her strawweight title against former world champion Zhang Weili. There's British interest on the prelims when Molly McCann takes on Erin Blanchfield.
Adesanya is the betting favourite heading into tomorrow night despite having been brutally stopped in their last meeting, given that he hasn't lost at middleweight in his MMA career. Pereira is still relatively inexperienced in the cage, but the champion believes he should be the favourite given their last few results.
Who do you think wins; Israel Adesanya or Alex Pereira? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!
“I like it on me in this one," Adesanya told reporters earlier this week. "I saw last night, I’m like, ‘Why am I the favourite in this on the betting odds?’ I never check them but I just happened to see something on Instagram and I was like, ‘How the f*** am I the favorite?’ I feel like we should change that.
"How do we change that or something, fake an injury? I don’t know. We’ll see. I think we should bet on him this fight. Yeah, we’ll just see what happens... [Their first meeting] was a close fight, sure. But if you’re scoring the fight according to the criteria of kickboxing, I was doing work. I watched the highlights as well.
"I seen the shots I was hitting him with back then but he was just able to eat them. I was a skinny boy, skinny clown back then. But I can find those same angles on him. My game is a lot different. My striking has always been better suited for MMA. I’ve said that from the jump. I’m just really good at striking that I dominated in kickboxing, but my striking has always been better suited for MMA. Yeah, again. We’ll see.”
