LAS VEGAS – Luana Santos has no excuses for her recent blunder on the scales.
Ahead of Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 233 at the UFC Apex, Santos (7-1 MMA, 2-0 UFC) moved up a division to bantamweight, yet still came in heavy. She weighed in at 139 pounds, three pounds over the bantamweight limit. The next day, she defeated Stephanie Egger (8-5 MMA, 3-4 UFC) by unanimous decision.
Santos explained the weight miss after the event and issued an apology to the promotion for her failure on the scale.
“As far as the weight is concerned, I think I feel like I’m already a heavy girl for flyweight,” Santos told MMA Junkie and other reporters at a post-fight news conference. “When they actually came up to me and my manager Lukas (Lutkus) came and talked about this fight and said, ‘It’s going to be three weeks,’ it’s like ‘I can’t make it at bantamweight. I cannot make it at flyweight.’ Because I do feel like I have a big structure, I need more time to prepare for a fight at flyweight. Then, the process started. There have been changes.
“I’m not making excuses at all. I apologize to the UFC for this. There were some things throughout the process when we started doing weight (cut). Some of the exams came back and they had a little bit different results. We’re going to look into this toward the end of the years. We’re going to start the year and I’m going to go to Brazil and spend time with my family, kind of take a look at it. In no shape or form is that an excuse. It’s kind of a miscalculation. What I can say is sorry. I did everything I could and that will not happen.”
Looking into the future, Santos loves the idea of a matchup vs. a legend of mixed martial arts. At the previous Saturday’s UFC on ESPN 52, Miesha Tate turned back the clock and dominated Julia Avila en route to a one-sided unanimous decision.
If the promotion is in and Tate is in, Santos said she’ll be ready as soon as March.
“I had two dogs back in 2018. One of them was Ronda. The other one was Miesha,” Santos said. “They were the ones that were on the top of their game at that time. Unfortunately, Miesha is no longer with us. They were the ones I admired back in the day. This is not a callout by any means. I’m not saying anything. Miesha, I saw her fight last week and I understand if, hey, the UFC wants to do some matchmaking here, put us together to fight.
“Miesha, especially because she had a little thing going against Ronda (Rousey), a judo girl, myself being a judo girl as well. So why not? Put that through some matchmaking. Hey UFC, if you want to put us together, I’ll be ready in March. All the respect for you. All the love, but hey, you want to go out and do some punching and go at it?
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC Fight Night 233.
