Nate Diaz and Dustin both took to social media in an attempt to get the UFC to create a 165 pound division and title for them to compete for at UFC 230.
That idea was quickly shot down and UFC President Dana White says such a division doesn’t make any sense.
“Never even considered it,” White said to Brett Okamoto of ESPN. “It’s all just talk, I never even considered it. First of all, you make 165-pounds, you’re gonna start pulling people from the 170-pound division. And you’re going to see a lot of people from 170 and 155 that couldn’t win a title jumping to 165 to try to fight for a title there. It just doesn’t make sense.”
The UFC currently has twelve weight classes, ranging from the men’s heavyweight division to the women’s strawweight division.
White also doesn’t want to create the additional weight class because he doesn’t want to see confusion rise up among the fan base.
“We’ve always kept things simple. One of the things about boxing is you used to have junior middleweight, super-middleweight, and all these different weights, and it was hard to follow. You didn’t really know who was the champion, and this is pretty simple and easy to follow. We have enough weight classes,” says White.
UFC 230 takes place on Saturday, November 3 from Madison Square Garden in new York, New York with Valentina Shevchenko and Sijara Eubanks headlining. Fightful is providing live coverage of the event, with a post-show podcast to follow.
