Tag: UFC Rio Rancho

RIO RANCHO, N.M. – [autotag]Ray Borg[/autotag] hopes to continue fighting at flyweight.

The former UFC title challenger doesn’t want to move up to bantamweight despite having missed weight three times trying to make the 126-pound non-title limit required in his current weight class.

Borg’s most recent struggle with the scale came during the weigh-ins for Saturday night’s bout with Brazil’s Rogerio Bontorin at UFC on ESPN+ 25, which Borg (13-4 MMA, 7-4 UFC) won via unanimous decision. On Friday morning, Borg came in at 128 pounds. After being fined 30 percent of his purse, the bout continued as a catchweight affair.

“I need to talk it over with my manager and with the UFC, but me personally, I think 125 is good for me,” Borg told reporters, including MMA Junkie, following the fight. “I don’t feel like it had anything to do with discipline, I’ve learned to man up to my mistakes and accept accountability.

“If there is one thing I can say is that it wasn’t discipline, not being in the right weight, it was just the system not working for me. Everything was perfect the whole week. When I spoke to you guys in the media scrum before, everything was great, weight wasn’t even high, and as soon as we started the cut – you guys saw we took the extra hour, we even asked for more time – but the weight wasn’t cooperating.

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Borg apologized to the UFC for missing weight. The 26-year-old fighter insists he can find a more reliable way to get down to 125 pounds,

“I truly feel like it’s just finding the right system. I’ve worked with so many weight-cut gurus, weight-cut dietitians, and I’ve tried always to pick things that I like from each one and tried to squeeze it all in one weight cut. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. I think it’s just finding the right weight-cut system that’s best for my career.”

Despite wanting to stay at flyweight, Borg said that if the UFC were to force him to move up to bantamweight, he’d do it.

“I don’t have a problem at 135; I can compete with guys that size,” Borg explained. “It’s not something that’s out of the picture. I just feel comfortable at 125, and if I were to move to 135, I would have to find a way to get my body comfortable at 135 and not just 125.”

Although missing weight is never a good thing, Borg still managed to walk away with a dominant victory in front of his home crowd at the Santa Ana Star Center in New Mexico. Borg says that part of his fight week was a dream come true.

“It would obviously be way better if the weight went my way,” Borg said. “But to fight in front of my home town, a lot of people say it’s a dream to do this, it’s a dream to do that, and in high school, when I was preparing for MMA, I always told myself no matter what stage I was on, it would always be the coolest thing in the world to fight on a big stage in front of my home town. So there is no explaining how this moment feels.”

To hear more from Borg, check out the video above.

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