Renato Moicano made weight at 156 pounds on Friday, keeping his UFC Vegas 123 main event with Tom Nolan intact for Saturday. Nolan was right on target too, coming in at 155.5 pounds.
That matters because weigh-ins are the last formal checkpoint before a card can move forward, and both headliners cleared it. Moicano is trying to build on a main event win over Chris Duncan this past April, while Nolan is chasing a sixth straight victory that would place him in a tie with Arman Tsarukyan and Quillan Salkilld for the longest UFC win streak at 155 pounds.
The card did not escape the scale completely. Francis Marshall missed the featherweight non-title limit by two pounds, weighing 148 and forcing his bout with Dakota Hope to continue at a catchweight. Marshall also forfeited 20 percent of his purse, a costly penalty on a night when every other fighter set to compete Saturday made weight.
Hope had stepped in on less than a month’s notice as a replacement for Gaston Bolanos, who withdrew because of an eye injury. Outside of Marshall, the rest of the field held up their end of the bargain, and UFC Vegas 123 was set to go ahead on Saturday with the main event preserved and one undercard fight adjusted instead of canceled.
For Moicano, the weigh-in did not change the fight, but it confirmed what mattered most: the headliner is still on. For Marshall, the missed weight turned a scheduled bout into a compromise, and the purse loss was the price for not making the limit.
