Nobody missed. Every fighter on the UFC Vegas 124 card hit their number at Friday’s official weigh-ins, and that includes heavyweight headliners Waldo Cortes-Acosta and Johnny Walker, who are now locked in for Saturday’s main event.
Cortes-Acosta stepped on at 262 pounds. Walker came in at 239. That’s a 23-pound gap between two men in the same division, which is the kind of math that makes heavyweight the best weight class in the sport.
BJPenn.com reported the clean sweep, and MMA Sucka called it a perfect Friday on the scales. The faceoff made the rounds on r/MMA shortly after, with the weights printed right in the post title. Yahoo Sports ran the ceremonial faceoff gallery under the UFC Fight Night 293 banner, so if you see both names floating around, it’s the same show.
This fight wasn’t supposed to headline. Sean Brady got hurt and was pulled from his planned main event against Gabriel Bonfim, and Cortes-Acosta vs. Walker got bumped to the top slot. Cortes-Acosta has made it clear he’s not worried about the late change. In a BJPenn.com piece earlier in the week, he predicted a violent finish and offered a blunt scouting report on his opponent: “He doesn’t have a chin.”
Walker will get to respond Saturday night.
The co-main is a women’s strawweight fight with title-picture stakes. Tatiana Suarez weighed 115.5 pounds and Virna Jandiroba came in at 116, both on target. Each of them is trying to stay in the conversation at 115, and the loser of this one has a long climb back.
Further down the card, bantamweights Davey Grant and Elijah Smith both weighed exactly 135.5 pounds. Smith came through Dana White’s Contender Series, and he draws a veteran in Grant, who is closing in on his 41st birthday and still fighting at one of the sport’s most punishing weights. Respect.
The rest of the board was clean too. Light heavyweights Billy Elekana and Lucas Fernando are official. So are women’s strawweights Priscila Cachoeira and Nina Milosevic, plus flyweights Mitch Raposo and Marcos Degli.
Losing a Brady vs. Bonfim headliner stings. Welterweight contender fights don’t grow on trees. But the replacement is two heavyweights who agreed to headline on short notice, with one of them openly questioning the other’s chin and outweighing him by 23 pounds. I’ll take that trade. Walker at 239 is going to be giving up real size every second this fight stays close, so his best path is probably the one that keeps him off the fence and away from 262 pounds of leaning. Cortes-Acosta says it ends violently. At these weights, he’s probably right about that part. He just might be wrong about who’s standing.
