UFC veteran Diego Brandao will not be competing at Friday\u2019s Karate Combat 59 card in Miami after his opponent Shahzaib Rind missed weight for their lightweight contest.<\/p>\n
Brandao, who is moving up a weight class after winning and defending the Tuff-N-Uff title in 2025, opted against taking the fight after Ring, the former Karate Combat 150-pound champion, stepped on the scale at 160 pounds on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fight is off, unfortunately,\u201d Brandao told MMA Fighting. \u201cHe didn\u2019t make weight. He\u2019s at 160 now. How heavy is he going to be tomorrow? 170? There\u2019s no reason I should take this fight, especially since I\u2019m coming up from a lighter division.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s still unclear if Brandao will be moved to a future Karate Combat card. He\u2019s currently scheduled to be part of a 8-man MMA grand prix in Russia, which kicks off March 7, and still hopes to one day return to the bigger leagues in the United States.<\/p>\n
Brandao hasn\u2019t fought in the UFC since January 2016, when he lost to Brian Ortega after back-to-back first-round finishes the year before. The Ultimate Fighter season 14 winner went 6-4 under the UFC banner with four stoppage to his credit, and has faced off with future superstars Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still believe I can go back to the UFC so I have to take the right fights, fair fights,\u201d Brandao said. \u201cI lost 20 pounds this week, and I\u2019ve done my part, so f*ck it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC veteran Diego Brandao will not be competing at Friday\u2019s Karate Combat 59 card in Miami after his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85],"class_list":["post-475861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}