Former UFC Lightweight Champion Anthony Pettis started off his run at featherweight by submitting Charles Oliveira at UFC On Fox 21, but after a failed weight cut and loss to Max Holloway at UFC 206, the former lightweight champion will be returning to the division he once dominated.
“(It’s) too much to make the cut, bro,” Pettis said in his post-fight interview. “I was dying from the weight cut. Literally they had to pull me out of the sauna. I depleted my body, so it’s too much of a cut. I have to go back (to lightweight). I can’t make the 45 weight cut. It’s too much. Max Holloway’s a beast, bro. I swear. Kid did this right, man. He got in here and would stand with me and he got the belt, bro. He’s a good fighter.”
Pettis, failed weight cut aside, also suffered a broken hand in the first round of the fight with Holloway, an injury that hampered him throughout the fight.
“(I broke my hand on the) first punch,” Pettis said. “First right I hit him with hit him on the top of the head. Broke my hand. It’s (expletive) swollen right here, so I got to deal with that (expletive).”
Pettis and Travis Lutter are the only two fighters in the modern era UFC to miss weight for a title fight. Lutter’s was at UFC 67, where he was set to fight then middleweight champion Anderson Silva.
