TORONTO -- There was a minor controversy Friday near the end of the UFC 165 weigh-in at Maple Leaf Square, when Eddie Wineland appeared to weigh a quarter-pound more than the 135-pound bantamweight limit for a championship fight.
Wineland will challenge interim champion Renan Barao for the bantamweight belt in the co-main event of the fight card at the Air Canada Centre. Fighters in non-title fights get a one-pound allowance over the divisional limit, but championship fighters must hit the weight on the limit.
UFC television analyst Joe Rogan was announcing the fighter weights, and he relayed Wineland's weight as given to him by an official from the Office of the Athletics Commissioner of Ontario. Rogan announced Wineland's weight as 135 1/4 pounds. That would mean he is a quarter-pound over the weight.
No one from the commission was available to comment.
It isn't that big of a deal because Wineland could easily have made it, but the purpose of the weigh-in is to make sure the fighters meet the contracted weight. At 135 1/4, Wineland didn't make it.
UFC president Dana White and matchmaker Joe Silva, who were on stage, said they did not hear it announced as 135 1/4. Silva showed Yahoo Sports a sheet he was keeping in which he recorded the weight as 135.
"Joe Silva is anal about that kind of thing and he'd jump up and scream, 'That's not 135! He's got to make 135!' but he didn't say a thing," White said. "And I didn't hear it."
Several reporters sitting together near the stage where the fighters were being weighed heard it, however, as did UFC executive Marc Ratner. Clearly, Wineland would have been able to drop his shorts and make the weight, but the commission still needs to go through the formality and do it. They blew it in this case.
This is similar to an event at UFC 158 earlier this year, when welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre reportedly weighed "up to 0.9 pounds" over the 170-pound divisional limit before a fight in Montreal against Nick Diaz.
Steve The Snake Claveau Rich No Love Clementi Mark The Hammer Coleman Wes Soldier Combs
