VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – Friday, [autotag]Joseph Benavidez[/autotag] made weight for UFC on ESPN+27. Deiveson Figueiredo did not, however – tipping the scales at 127.5 pounds.
The main event continues on, but with one major adjustment: Benavidez (28-5 MMA, 15-3 UFC) will be the only fighter of the two main event participants who can claim UFC flyweight champion status with a victory. Additionally, Figueiredo (17-1 MMA, 6-1 UFC) will forfeit 30 percent of his purse to Benavidez.
After his opponent’s miss, a calm and collected Benavidez ran through his perspective before, during and after Friday’s early weigh-ins calamity.
“I guess I kind of heard rumblings,” Benavidez said. “I love my corner and my wife, who I include in my corner, obviously, and everyone so much – even people down at the UFC – how professional they are. I think there was some serious stuff going on, but no one ever came up and said anything. They know how I am and it doesn’t matter.
“… (My wife) was answering the calls and she was talking in a way like she wasn’t trying to say something. I could feel her stress. She’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got to go. Well, he’s sleeping right now. Nope, we’ll talk about it later.’ Then she came up to me and was like, ‘Look, your opponent missed the weight.’ I was just like, ‘OK.’ I was like, ‘Well, I’ll still fight him but let’s get, like, 30 percent.'”
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Benavidez had every intention to take the fight despite the three-pound difference in weight between the two fighters on the scales. He did admit he wanted to make the Brazilian flyweight as uncomfortable as possible, so he didn’t accept the fight right away.
“It was never in my mind to not take the fight,” Benavidez said. “I just said, ‘Oh, OK. Well, let’s see what we can do.’ Obviously, I wanted him to suffer more. I was like, ‘Tell him he has to make 126,’ because there was an hour left still. He didn’t even come in at 11 (a.m.). He came in at 10 (a.m.), I think. It was like, ‘You have an hour and you’re 2.5 over or whatever.’ So anyway, that was about it.”
With how things played out, Benavidez said he lost respect for Figueiredo. In the end, it won’t matter, Benavidez said. According to him, Figueiredo was never going to win the UFC title, anyway.
“You have to lose respect for somebody in that regard,” Benavidez said. “They have the biggest opportunity of their life there and they squander it like that. … It’s just more conviction that he wasn’t going to ever win the belt, anyway. Obviously, I was the only one who was going to win it. I’m the only one who came to win it. It doesn’t change what I’m going to do. He tried to get out of the first fight he did when it got moved a week up. He had a weight issue. This fight, he’s trying to get out with this.
“It’s like, ‘You’re not going to stop me from what I came to do.’ That was never a question. Of course you lose respect for the guy. That goes into just more the conviction of, ‘I did everything I was supposed to do.’ I was ready for this. I’m the only one who came to win this belt. I was the only one from the beginning that was going to win it. Like I said, it’s just more conviction in the things we already believed in.”
UFC on ESPN+ 27 takes place Saturday at Chartway Arena in Norfolk, Va. The card streams on ESPN+.
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