While the big MMA news of the weekend will come from Saturday night's UFC 146 fight card at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas - with its all-heavyweight main card headlined by a UFC Heavyweight Championship bout between champion Junior dos Santos and challenger Frank Mir - a former UFC fighter made news Friday with a continuation of the issues that caused his ouster from the UFC in the first place.
Former UFC welterweight Anthony Johnson, who was scheduled to face fellow UFC veteran David Branch at middleweight on Friday's Titan FC 22 fight card at Memorial Hall in Kansas City, will be instead be fighting Branch in a catchweight bout at 195 pounds.
This marks the second time since Johnson moved to middleweight from welterweight that he has failed to make the 185-pound middleweight limit. He was scheduled to make his middleweight debut against Vitor Belfort at UFC 142 in January, but missed weight badly at 197 pounds and was cut from the promotion following his first-round submission loss in Rio de Janeiro.
The move from welterweight to middleweight seemed natural for Johnson, who struggled to make 170 pounds, but back-to-back failures to make the heavier weight are truly mystifying, particularly since he was successful on a number of occasions in making welterweight. Of course, Johnson had some truly bad misses during his welterweight tenure - he weighed in seven pounds heavy against Rich Clementi at UFC 76 and six pounds heavy for his bout with Yoshiyuki Yoshida at 104 - but he had made weight successfully in his last three fights at welterweight, including his Knockout of the Night performance against Charlie Brenneman this past October.
Johnson is a talented fighter, and capable of delivering exciting action in the cage, but if he's going to get his career on track, it's time for him to get on top of his weight issues. A call to noted fighter nutritionist Mike Dolce - whose "Dolce Diet" has made a big difference for fighters like Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and Thiago "Pit Bull" Alves - might be in order.
In the meantime, Johnson has a date set with David Branch, Friday night in Kansas City, at Titan Fighting Championships 22. The fight will air live on HDNet at 10 p.m. ET, immediately following MMA Live.
