In mixed martial arts, every ounce matters. One pound too heavy, and the balance shifts, not just on the scale or inside the cage, but in a fighter’s career. For Yana Santos, it’s become an all-too-familiar script. Four of her last seven UFC opponents have missed weight. Each time, the pattern repeats: her rival steps in heavy, pays a fine, and Santos steps into the Octagon anyway, forced to fight or risk her paycheck, her ranking, and even her roster spot.

But instead of letting frustration eat away at her, Santos has now decided to flip the narrative, quite literally, into profit. In a cheeky post on X, the Russian fighter recently revealed how she’d turned her opponents’ carelessness into cold, hard assets!

Yana Santos points out the silver lining after repeated weight misses by her opponents

Santos shared, “Just bought a nice piece of real estate back in Russia… thanks to all the fines my opponents paid for missing weight. So yeah… I’ve officially changed my mind — please, keep missing!  Big thanks to @ufc for making dreams (and investments) come true.”

It was a jab wrapped in humor, but beneath it lies years of exasperation. At UFC 320, Santos faced Macy Chiasson, who weighed in at 137.5 pounds, a pound and a half over the non-title bantamweight limit. The fine was 25% of Chiasson’s purse, but in an interview with MMA Fighting, Santos confessed, “A couple of fights ago, when my opponent missed a lot of weight and we were thinking, ‘Should we take the fight or not?’ UFC made it very clear that the person who will be punished is me if I refuse to fight. So I’m not getting paid, I have a chance to be cut and all these things.”

That’s the dilemma Yana Santos has faced time and again. In 2024, Chelsea Chandler missed by a staggering five pounds. Santos still fought and won, but the sense of fairness was long gone as she further shared, “It is what it is. If I want to keep my job, I have to fight.”

And Yana Santos is not exaggerating. Leslie Smith’s 2018 case stands as a haunting example. When Smith declined to fight Aspen Ladd, who missed weight, reports emerged that she was paid out and promptly released from the UFC roster. Since then, few fighters have dared to refuse. In fact, weight cutting remains one of MMA’s most controversial practices.

Fighters push their bodies to dangerous extremes to make the weight limits, which can have disastrous results, as evidenced by what happened with Brian Ortega at UFC Shanghai a while back. And now, as UFC Rio approaches, the specter of weight cutting continues to haunt the promotion!

UFC Rio fighter misses weight by a shocking amount

Just when fans thought the scale drama had peaked, UFC Rio added another twist. Saimon Oliveira walked to the weigh-ins looking confident, but the number that flashed on the screen sent shockwaves through the room — 144 pounds, which is eight pounds over the bantamweight limit for non-title bouts. Not a near miss, not a tough cut gone wrong, it was a full weight-class blunder.

His opponent, Luan Lacerda, made the contracted 136 pounds without issue, setting the stage for yet another uneven playing field. The bout will now proceed at catchweight, with Oliveira forced to hand over a massive 50% of his purse. As per reports, he’s also been ordered not to exceed 155 pounds by fight night, a stipulation meant to keep the matchup somewhat fair.

Elsewhere on the Rio card, at least some order was restored. Former lightweight champion Charles Oliveira hit the mark at 156 pounds for his main event against Mateusz Gamrot, while co-main stars Deiveson Figueiredo and Montel Jackson both weighed in perfectly at 136. But the damage was already done; Saimon Oliveira’s massive miss became the headline before the fights even began.

To make matters worse, chaos spilled beyond the scales. Valter Walker showed up to weigh in despite his fight being canceled after Mohammed Usman withdrew for medical reasons. “This mother—- ran!” Walker shouted in Portuguese, a fitting exclamation for a weigh-in day that had already descended into mayhem.

As such, from Yana Santos’ long list of overweight opponents to Saimon Oliveira’s shocking eight-pound miss at UFC Rio, it’s clear that fines and catchweight clauses aren’t solving the issue. The system still rewards those who miss, while punishing those who stay disciplined. For every fighter who shrugs off the rules, another pays the price, sometimes with their health, sometimes with their career.