It's a rare day when a change in weight class comes as a complete surprise. Even when it's something like Ildemar Alcantara dropping all the way to welterweight after his light heavyweight debut. For Alcantara's part he was a middleweight champion in Jungle Fight, and moved up to fight Wagner Prado in the UFC. Welterweight was likely his long term destination.

It is, however quite a shock to hear that Lucas Martin's next fight will not be coming at lightweight, or even at featherweight, but all the way down in the bantamweight division. At 5' 9", and weighing in at just 153 pounds for his most recent fight against Jeremy Larsen, Martins was not a large lightweight. But there was never a point watching his fight against Larsen or Barboza before him, where I found myself thinking that Martins' principal problem was his lack of size. However, the change appears to be official.

MMAjunkie spoke to Martin's manager Wade Hampel:



"I requested the change this morning with Sean Shelby and Joe Silva, and they signed off on it," Hampel said.

Considering how difficult it is to shed excess weight in the smaller divisions the idea of dropping 20 lbs to get down to bantamweight seems far fetched. Given that Martins doesn't appear to have a lot of extra pounds to spare, the cut will probably involve getting rid of some muscle mass. A less muscular physique may be better in the long run for the volume striker that Martin's seems to style himself as, but I can't help thinking that the cost of the cut may be too high for him to stay effective at 135 lbs.

There's no word yet on who his opponent will be for his divisional debut, or even when it will come, but we'll be sure to keep you posted as more information becomes available.