I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: one of the things I love most about mixed martial arts is that just when you think you’ve seen it all, something new and incredibly dumb will happen.
Why do I bring this up, you ask? Saturday’s UFC main event is set to be a top matchup between Paulo Costa and Marvin Vettori, the two most recent challengers for the middleweight title. As they are two of the most highly ranked middleweights in the world, the fight was contracted, naturally, at middleweight. But this week, Costa did something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before: he took the mic at media day and just flat-out said, “Hey guys, this ‘making weight’ thing? Yeah, it’s just not gonna happen.'”
News has since broke that the bout will proceed at light heavyweight, not that the UFC really had a choice. It’s a one-fight card – although I think Grant Dawson–Ricky Glenn is gonna be a banger, that’s hardly a main event bout. But Paulo Costa showing up three days before the fight, saying that he’s 25 pounds above the weight limit and simply isn’t gonna try to make it happen… that’s some real crazy shit!
Costa has seemingly gone insane since his defeat to Israel Adesanya last year, but this is really special. I genuinely don’t understand how you could botch your weight cut this badly. Costa was always huge for 185, but in 13 pro fights had hit the mark every single time, seemingly with little incident. Much less incident, at least, than Aspen Ladd, who missed weight for a bantamweight bout a few weeks ago and showed up in such frighteningly poor condition – she literally looked like she was about to die on the scale – that they called the fight off.
Big weight cuts have always been an ugly part of MMA – and all combat sports, really – as fighters put themselves through absolute hell before they do it all again on fight night. Costa just noping out of it on Wednesday is a special case, but he’s far from the only person we’ve seen absolutely screw up their weight cut. Here are a few of the worst ever:
Mackenzie Dern, 7 pounds
In 2018, Mackenzie Dern gave us what I believe to be the single biggest weight miss in the history of women’s UFC competition. Even Ladd, who was genuinely near death before her recent scheduled fight with Macy Chiasson (and famously before her fight with Germaine de Randamie, and she even made weight for that one) was only about a pound off. Strawweight is the only MMA weight Dern has ever fought at, but she missed weight three times in her first seven pro bouts – this fight with Amanda Cooper was especially bad, as she came in at 123 pounds for a fight that was contracted with a 116-pound limit.
According to Dern, it was simply a combination of factors relating to substandard diet, training and her body not reacting the way she wanted it to. It also marked a turning point in her career. This was Dern’s last fight for over a year – she had her first child the next year, which inspired the jiu-jitsu ace to take this aspect of her career more seriously. She hasn’t missed weight since.
Charles Oliveira, 9 pounds
How about another horrible weight miss that marked a turning point for an elite fighter? After starting his UFC career at lightweight, Charles Oliveira dropped to featherweight in 2012, making his name as a skilled submission specialist who folded in adversity and always had trouble on the scale. In his four years at 145, Oliveira missed weight four times, each time by bigger margins. The last was the worst: he weighed in at 155 pounds for his loss to Ricardo Lamas in 2016. Perhaps a factor was that Oliveira was making what was always a tough cut for him on short notice, having stepped in for B.J. Penn about two weeks out. That seemed to be a sign to Chucky Olives: if I’m gonna weigh in at 155, might as well just fight there, right? Worked out for him, as he’s currently the UFC lightweight champion.
Kelvin Gastelum, 9 pounds
Kelvin Gastelum may not be tall, but the man is thick – I still struggle to conceive of how the guy was making 170 back in the day. Well, he wasn’t making it all that often. After winning the Ultimate Fighter season 17 at middleweight in 2013, Gastelum immediately dropped to welterweight and went on a nice run, but was hounded by weight issues along the way. For a featured bout with future champ Tyron Woodley at UFC 183 in 2015, Gastelum weighed in at 180 on a 171-pound limit – Woodley won the fight by split decision and later returned the share of Gastelum’s purse that Gastelum was required to hand over for missing weight. Woodley also claimed he gave Gastelum some metabolic meals that Gastelum “obviously didn’t eat.” The weird part is that Gastelum actually stayed at 170 for a while after this, successfully making 170 a couple of times, before moving up to 185 for good at becoming a top contender.
Anthony “Rumble” Johnson, 11 pounds
When you think about weigh-in fuckery, you think of Anthony “Rumble” Johnson, a first class inductee of the Gleison Tibau Memorial Hall of Fame for Guys Who Should Not Be Fighting at that Weight Class. A hulking beast of a man, Johnson actually spent the first few years of his UFC career fighting at welterweight, where he was so huge that it was almost comical. Unsurprisingly, he had a few bad misses, including a six-pound miss against Rich Clementi in 2007 and a five-pounder against Yoshiyuki Yoshida two years later. In 2012, it was finally time: move up to middleweight. Should be a lot easier, right?
WRONG. In his middleweight debut against Vitor Belfort, Johnson somehow missed by ELEVEN POUNDS, setting a UFC record, when he weighed in at 197. According to Johnson, he had gotten down as far as 187.5 the morning of weigh-ins, but became seriously dehydrated and ill, and had been ordered by doctors to rehydrate. Dana White called it one of the most unprofessional things he had ever seen, and Johnson was given his walking papers after he lost by first-round submission.
But the story doesn’t end there. Four months later, he tried to make 185 again for a Titan FC fight with David Branch, but missed by 8.2 pounds. So Johnson said “fuck it,” embraced being a beefy boy, beat Andrei Arlovski at heavyweight, and returned to the UFC at 205 and became one of the baddest light heavyweights in the game. When he re-signed with the UFC in 2014, Johnson said that he had been told he’d receive a lifetime ban from the organization if he ever missed weight again, and he never has.
Rafael Alves, 11.5 pounds
Johnson’s mark was a UFC record that I sincerely thought would never be broken. It stood for nearly a decade, but against all odds, it finally fell in February, when featherweight Rafael Alves weighed in at 157.5 pounds for his UFC debut against Pat Sabatini. When it happened, the news was met with shock and disbelief. This was a 57-game hitting streak, a 101-point game. Rumble’s immortal mark had finally been bested, and by a guy no one had ever heard of.
In the days to come, Alves blamed his weight miss on food poisoning from eating bad salmon during fight week, which is just a classic dumb MMA guy excuse – right up there with Ricardo Arona claiming he lost to Sokoudjou because he had dengue fever. Three months later, Alves gave a different, much sadder reason: his wife had suffered a miscarriage, he found out only the day before, and it sapped his will to fight.
Perhaps it was in part because of this tragedy that the UFC decided to look past this egregious miss and keep Alves around. He debuted at lightweight in May, and lost to Damir Ismagulov by unanimous decision.
Jason “Mayhem” Miller, 24 pounds
But for the really, really good shit, you always have to go outside the big-time. Jason “Mayhem” Miller was a popular figure in MMA throughout the 2000s, a skilled grappler with a mischievous, charismatic personality who ranked among the better middleweights outside the UFC for a number of years. In recent years, we’ve seen a much darker side of Miller. After being cut following a brief UFC run in 2012, Miller has been in and out of jail due to various violent offenses, seemingly has had severe mental health issues, and will likely be going to prison for quite a while after being arrested for felony domestic violence last month.
For all intents and purposes, Miller’s MMA career ended after his UFC release. But he did resurface for a brief comeback in 2016, one that gave us quite possibly the single greatest weight miss in the history of the sport. Yes, that 24 pounds up there isn’t a typo. Jason “Mayhem” Miller weighed in at 209 for a 185-pound fight.
In 2016, after four years out of the game, Miller signed to fight for the middleweight title of Venator FC, an Italian promotion that was making a brief play at becoming a power in European MMA. His scheduled opponent was UFC vet Luke Barnatt – also on that card were well-known names like Rousimar Palhares, Matt Hamill, Sokoudjou, Cody McKenzie (the McKenzie-tine!) and a young Marvin Vettori.
Miller wound up doing nothing of the sort, after the most egregious weight miss of all time. For his part, Miller blamed jet lag, then claimed to have somehow accidentally chugged a bunch of big water jugs the night before the weigh-in – in his sleep, maybe? Sleep-chugging? At any rate, the Barnatt fight was off, but Venator instead had him fight local light heavyweight Mattia Schiavolin, despite the fact that he missed weight for that weight class too. Miller lost by second-round submission.
With his recent troubles, the sport of MMA is much better without Jason “Mayhem” Miller. But goddamn, no one ever did it quite like him.
The Big Fight 