There was a bit of drama this morning at the UFC 257 weigh-ins. To start out the morning, Jon Anik announced that the lightweight matchup between Matt Frevola (8-1-1) and Ottman Azaitar (13-0) was called off.
There still has been no update other than that from the UFC. Azaitar’s team posted a video on Instagram a few hours ago saying it was a tough weight cut, but supposedly Azaitar was close to making weight.
However, he never made it to the UFC 257 weigh-ins. Matt Frevola still showed up and successfully made weight at 155.5 pounds. The word was that Frevola would serve as a backup with many other lightweight fights on the card.
At this point, you can imagine Frevola would take a fight against anyone considering this would be his fourth cancellation in the last year. Later on this morning, Arman Tsarukyan (15-2) took the scale. He was three pounds over coming in at 159 pounds.
Tsarukyan was scheduled to take on Nasrat Haqparast (12-3) tomorrow night. UFC officials have announced that Haqparast will not compete tomorrow and never made it to weigh-ins this morning just like Azaitar.
With those two out, the promotion moved to book the matchup between Frevola and Tsarukyan. After some scrambling, the UFC confirmed the bout and now Matt Frevola will take on Arman Tsarukyan tomorrow night.
Arman Tsarukyan vs. Matt Frevola is on for UFC 257 per sources.
Tsarukyan will forfeit 20% of his purse as a result of missing weight.
— Aaron Bronsteter (@aaronbronsteter) January 22, 2021
UFC 257’s new lightweight matchup
This will be the first UFC fight for Frevola since October of 2019. As previously mentioned, Frevola had three fights fall through in 2020. It was not surprising at all to see him accept the fight against Tsarukyan this morning.
Tsarukyan is a Russian prospect that has a decent amount of hype behind him. Since 2015, the only man to have defeated Tsarukyan is Islam Makhachev. That loss came in Tsarukyan’s UFC debut.
Since that fight, he’s 2-0 with two decision wins. Both men are riding two-fight winning streaks heading into tomorrow night. While it’s not the opponent they originally had, they both will still have the opportunity to compete on a massive Conor McGregor card.