Despite fighter taking a hard stance on social media against Dana White’s recent comments about dissolving early weigh-ins, the UFC president said the athletes actually want it to happen.

The number of weigh-in misses in the UFC has been a hot topic over the past several months. It’s flared up even more of late, though, and as a result White said there are plans in motion to move away from early weigh-ins, and go back to the previous system with weigh-ins taking place at 4 o’clock local time.

Fighters were overwhelmingly resistant to White’s comments in their initial reactions, but White said his conversations behind the scenes are very different.

“It can’t happen fast enough,” White told reporters following today’s UFC 225 weigh-ins. “We are moving to the old weigh-in system. It’s going to happen. There’s a couple people out there who say, ‘No, no, no.’ But, the majority of the fighters want to go back 4 o’clock.

“The fighters talked to me, that’s how we ended up here. So many people were coming to me asking if we could go back to 4 o’clock, that, here we are.”

Since White’s initial comments, all sorts of suggestions about a different fix have been brought to light. One of those is giving the fights the option to weigh-in during the two-hour window in the morning, as is currently the case, while also giving an option to officially weigh in during what’s now the “ceremonial weigh-in” window.

White said that’s not an option from his perspective.

“No, no hybrid,” White said. “No whatever. You’re not going to get the commission to show up twice. They’re going to show up once, it’ll be at 4 o’clock. That’s when they’ll weigh in.”

Although there are clear drawbacks to both systems, White said the numbers don’t lie, and in his opinion, what’s happening now isn’t working. MMAjunkie recently published a report showing nearly double the weight misses in the two years since early weigh-ins were implemented, and White said that’s basically all he needs to see.

“In my experience, and I’m sure in yours too, I don’t know many fighters that are morning people,” White said. “Usually they sleep half the day and wake up later. I think that the early-morning weight cut. They’re up cutting weight all night and they have to get up early again and people are missing weight. The numbers don’t lie. More people are missing weight now than ever before.

“I know Eddie Alvarez was very outspoken about saying, ‘These are the type of people who will never make weight, they’re undisciplined’ and this and that. To a point, Eddie’s not wrong there. It’s your job to make weight, you’re supposed to make weight. But we had a lot less of this when it was at 4 o’clock and I believe it will go down. A lot of fighters are asking us to move the weigh-ins.”

When early weigh-ins were first utilized ahead of UFC 199 in June 2016, most of the thought behind it was to give fighters additional hours to replenish and rehydrate before stepping in the octagon. There’s no denying that aspect of it, but White said the athletes were no unhealthier in the past.

“It was a decision that we made,” White said. “Guys wouldn’t have to sit around until 4 o’clock every day, they could get rehydrated. We never had any problems in the old days with 4 o’clock. Everybody was healthy, everybody was fine. We’re going back there. … This didn’t just pop up out of thin air. We’ve been talking about this for a while.”

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