‘Half a Pound, Bro?… It Hurts with Legacy’- Max Holloway Goes After ‘Stickler’ Who Cost Charles Oliveira His Lightweight Belt at UFC 274
UFC featherweight Max Holloway recently weighed in on Charles Oliveira’s highly publicized weight miss in an interview with Ariel Helwani. ‘Do Bronx’ was stripped of his belt prior to UFC 274’s bout against Justin Gaethje after coming in 0.5 pounds over the weight limit.
The defeat was a major setback and now Charles Oliveira is going to fight for his now-vacant belt once more, despite never actually losing it.
Max Holloway believes that the man who was in charge of weighing the champion was a ‘stickler’ who seemed hellbent on seeing that Oliveria would be stripped of his belt. Holloway also felt greatly for Charles Oliveira who will now have to make his first title defense again if he wins, rather than build his resume as a champion.
“I feel bad for the guy, man. I don’t know. The guy who was weighing him in was a stickler, bro. That’s just what it is.”
“[The scale] was moving, you know?” Holloway said. “You go to ‘55, you should’ve let it move a little like that and say ‘55. How many times do you see it? So I don’t know what happened, man. It sucks. It sucks for him because now his next fight is not going to be a title defense if he wins it. You know, he’s winning the title back.”
“So that’s history getting taken away from Oliveira and I feel bad for the guy, man. He been going out there, doing his thing — and like, half a pound, bro? Come on. I feel bad for the guy, for sure…. You know? So I feel bad for him, man. It that hurts him a lot. It hurts with legacy. It probably hurts him contract-wise. So we’ll see what happens.” [h/t mmafighting.com]
Oliveira is on an 11-fight win streak and will likely be facing Islam Makhachev for the vacant lightweight belt. If Oliveira secures the win, he’ll have a long way back to once again racking up the title defenses to stake his claim as the best-ever lightweight fighter to do it.
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