Top welterweight in the world forced to weigh-in for a second time.
Firm favourite for the vacant UFC welterweight crown Johny Hendricks was forced to come back and weigh a second time after initially coming in at a staggering 1.5 pounds about the 170lb limit.
Ahead of his main event bout against Robbie Lawler for the belt, Hendricks and his camp were left scrambling after the 30-year-old was over the set mark.
UFC president Dana White said the problem was with the set of scales used by Hendricks and his camp before arriving on stage and stepping onto the official Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation scales.
After coming back to the scales an hour and a half after his first attempt, Hendricks made the limit just, thus maintaining his professional integrity and that of Mike Dolce, who is seen as the best in mixed martial arts for managing a weight cut.
And with Hendricks normally looking to lose up to 25 pounds before a fight, it would have been seen as a huge embarrassment if they were forced into the UFC’s Plan B on Saturday night in Dallas.
If Hendricks was still over the 170lb limit the five-round main event fight against Lawler still would have gone ahead, with only the “Ruthless” one able to win the belt left vacant by the departure of Georges St-Pierre.
Dolce said the scale they normally use and is calibrated to exactly the UFC’s specifications was damaged by others outside of the camp accidently.
We had gone to a local gym to do some weight cutting in the hot tub during fight week,” Dolce said. “It was actually last night.
“Unfortunately, while we were in the hot tub, and the scale was unattended, attendees of the gym were hopping on and off of it. We think the scale might have been damaged because the weight started reading inconsistently.”
“At one point, he was 171.8 (pounds) before he went into the bathtub, and we did a 20-minute in the bathtub, where we’ll lose [sixth-tenths of a pound] to a pound in that time.
“I’m sitting with him, and he’s sweating profusely. We go back and we step on, and it says he gained [two-tenths of an ounce] in that session. That was when he said, ‘F–k. This scale is off.’ That was probably going to be our last one or two sessions of the day.”
“So we knew Johny was going to be close.
“I felt that he would have and could have been on. In looking at the scale, it was 170.5. The commissioner said 171.5. I don’t know how correct that was; maybe my angle was bad or theirs was. But there’s no doubt that Johny was going to make weight.”
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