Julio Arce is not going anywhere.
The former Ring of Combat two-division champion assures he’s here to stay in the UFC’s bantamweight division, despite not making weight for his most recent fight.
Arce (18-5 MMA, 5-3 UFC), who returns Saturday at UFC 281 against Montel Jackson (11-2 MMA, 5-2 UFC), failed to make the bantamweight limit of 136 pounds for his fight against Daniel Santos at UFC 273 in April.
The decision win over Santos was Arce’s third fight since he dropped from featherweight to 135 pounds. The 33-year-old said it was a mishap that won’t happen again.
“That was my fault, but it was just a small miscalculation,” Arce told MMA Junkie in Spanish. “We just ran out of time. I had 0.5 pounds left, and I was still sweating, but if I don’t get to weigh-ins on time, then I can’t fight. So yeah, I just ran out of time.
“Now we’ve corrected the details that we needed to correct. Look, the first two fights at bantamweight I made 135 pounds. This last one was just a technical mistake. And I felt bad because regardless, I missed weight. But at least it wasn’t by that much. There are others who miss weight by three, four, five pounds. I did the best I could, but I just ran out of time.”
Arce has been competing in the UFC since 2018. He’s proud to fight under the Las Vegas-based promotion, but his dreams don’t stop there. Arce is determined to be a UFC champion, and his drop to bantamweight is key in those plans.
“That’s the weight class I needed to return to,” Arce said. “When I was fighting at 145, you could see my opponents were clearly bigger than me, and you could also see the weight class that I needed to be in. So I decided to return to 135 because I do have aspirations of fighting for a title, so it needed to be in this division.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 281.
