Mixed martial arts matchups don’t get much better than Ilia Topuria vs. Max Holloway and the UFC 308 main event was made official early Friday when both fighters made weight on the eve of the anticipated event.
Topuria and Holloway both stepped on the scale at an even 145 pounds ahead of their undisputed featherweight championship bout.
The defending champ, Topuria, is undefeated in MMA and won the title this past February when he knocked out Alexander Volkanovski, which is something former champ Holloway could not do in three tries.
Holloway is coming off a memorable last-second knockout of Justin Gaethje at UFC 300 in April to win the BMF Title and the former featherweight titleholder is looking to once again become king of the division for the first time since 2019.
Saturday’s 13-fight event takes place at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi so it has an earlier than usual start time for North American fight fans.
Both athletes involved in Saturday’s five-round co-main event also made weight successfully with Robert Whittaker weighing 185.5 pounds and Khamzat Chimaev 186 pounds. Non-title fights are granted a one-pound allowance so the extra pound for Chimaev and half pound for Whittaker were not an issue.
The winner of that bout will position themselves for a future title shot in the middleweight division.
It was not smooth sailing for all athletes on Friday, though, as Victor Hugo was a full weight class off ahead of his scheduled bantamweight contest with Farid Basharat.
Hugo weighed in at 145.5 pounds. That would’ve been fine if the matchup was contracted as a featherweight bout which has a non-title limit of 146 pounds. The non-title bantamweight limit is 136 pounds, so instead of risking potentially not competing this weekend, Basharat agreed to take the fight at featherweight.
Basharat had to put a pound back on to make his new agreed upon weight, briefly rehydrating before stepping on the scale at 137 pounds.
The 8.5-pound difference is one of the biggest discrepancies possible in a non-heavyweight matchup.
A scheduled lightweight bout between Mateusz Rebecki and Myktybek Orolbai was changed to a 160-pound catchweight contest. It was not immediately clear why that change was made.
Below are the official weigh-ins results for UFC 308:
MAIN CARD
— Ilia Topuria (145) vs. Max Holloway (145)
— Robert Whittaker (185.5) vs. Khamzat Chimaev (186)
— Magomed Ankalaev (205.5) vs. Aleksandar Rakic (206)
— Lerone Murphy (145.5) vs. Dan Ige (146)
— Sharabutdin Magomedov (185) vs. Armen Petrosyan (186)
PRELIMINARY CARD
— Ibo Aslan (205) vs. Raffael Cerqueira (203)
— Geoff Neal (171) vs. Rafael dos Anjos (171)
— Ismail Naurdiev (185) vs. Bruno Silva (185.5)
— Mateusz Rebecki (160) vs. Myktybek Orolbai (159)
— Abusupiyan Magomedov (185) vs. Brunno Ferreira (185.5)
— Farid Basharat (137) vs. Victor Hugo (145.5)
— Rinat Fakhretdinov (171) vs. Carlos Leal (169.5)
— Kennedy Nzechukwu (241) vs. Chris Barnett (264)