UFC 333 weigh-ins: both title fights official as Nicolle Caliari misses weight by 4.5 pounds

UFC 333 is officially a go. Both championship fights were locked in on Friday morning in Abu Dhabi, where Alexander Volkanovski, Movsar Evloev, Petr Yan and Merab Dvalishvili all made weight for Saturday's double title header at Etihad Arena. But the day's real drama came from the scale itself: Brazilian strawweight Nicolle Caliari missed weight by a whopping 4.5 pounds, and her opening bout against Iasmin Lucindo will now proceed at catchweight with 30 percent of her purse going to her opponent.

Caliari stepped on the scales at the Hilton Abu Dhabi Yas Island at 120.5 pounds — nowhere near the 116-pound non-title strawweight limit. Every other fighter on the 28-person card hit their mark, making Caliari the lone miss of the official weigh-in session. Because the miss was well beyond a pound or two, it could easily have cost her the fight entirely. Instead, Lucindo agreed to go ahead, and the bout survives as a catchweight opener on the early prelims.

For Lucindo, the decision was never really in doubt. The Brazilian is fighting for the first time after a nine-month suspension handed down by Combat Sports Anti-Doping (CSAD) following a positive test for mesterolone. CSAD ultimately determined the finding was consistent with unintentional contamination of a supplement, but the layoff still kept her out of competition for nearly a year. She did not fly from Brazil to Abu Dhabi to walk away from a fight.

A costly miss for Caliari

At 9-4 overall and 1-2 inside the Octagon, Caliari's UFC future was already uncertain before Friday. Her lone UFC victory — a submission over Shauna Bannon in May — is the only bright spot on an otherwise rocky run, and this was her first recorded weight miss. The 30-percent purse forfeiture stings financially, but the competitive implications may cut deeper: fighting at a catchweight against a heavier-on-the-night opponent, with the commission and the promotion both watching closely, is a hard way to save a roster spot.

Lucindo, meanwhile, enters at 18-6 overall and 5-2 in the UFC, with her only loss in her last six coming by decision to Amanda Lemos in 2025. The stakes, already high after her suspension, now tilt in her favor on paper — but the 4.5-pound gap is a real physical advantage for Caliari on fight night.

Featherweight title: the main event is set

The fights that matter most on the championship side cleared the scale without incident. Volkanovski, 38, weighed in at 144.5 pounds for his featherweight title defense against the undefeated Evloev, who hit 145 pounds on the dot. The champion is riding back-to-back unanimous decision wins over Diego Lopes and, as the first fighter over 35 to capture a UFC title below 170 pounds, keeps rewriting the sport's assumptions about age.

Evloev, 32, brings a perfect 20-0 record and a 10-0 Octagon mark into the biggest fight of his career. His resume runs through Lerone Murphy, Aljamain Sterling, Arnold Allen and Lopes, all handled the same way: relentless wrestling and positional control across five rounds. With 49 takedowns recorded inside the Octagon, he represents the classic stylistic test for Volkanovski — the volume striker with championship experience against the unbeaten grappler who has never seen the judges score against him.

Bantamweight trilogy: Yan vs. Dvalishvili III

The co-main event is just as official. Champion Petr Yan and former champion Merab Dvalishvili both weighed exactly 135 pounds, setting up the third chapter of one of the best rivalries in the sport. Dvalishvili blanked Yan 50-45 across the board in their first meeting in March 2023, then lost the belt to the Russian at the end of 2025 in a 49-46, 49-46, 48-47 defeat. The Georgian later admitted he had entered that fight with a knee injury and a compromised camp, which makes Saturday's rubber match as much a referendum on his health as on their styles.

Within hours of the weigh-in, Dvalishvili posted video of himself already at 154 pounds — 19 back in five hours of rehydration. The massive swing is nothing new for "The Machine," whose pace has always been his signature weapon, but it underlines how brutal the final 24 hours of a bantamweight title camp remain.

What Saturday looks like now

The rest of the card survived the scale intact: flyweight contender Lone'er Kavanagh (125.5) meets Ramazan Temirov (126), Alexander Volkov (256) faces Rizvan Kuniev (265), Aaron Pico (145.5) takes on Losene Keita (146), and bouts including Murzakanov vs. Reyes and Krylov vs. Yakhyaev round out a deep undercard.

UFC 333 streams in its entirety on Paramount+, with early prelims beginning at 10 a.m. ET and the main card starting at 2 p.m. ET on Saturday, October 24. It is an unusual daytime window for American viewers, but the Abu Dhabi setting — and a card headlined by two genuine championship fights — has already produced a sold-out Etihad Arena.

The weigh-in session did its job: no title fight was lost, no card was reshuffled, and the show moves forward. But Caliari's 4.5-pound miss will hang over the opening bout, and in a sport where roster security is never guaranteed, the Brazilian may have spent Friday morning fighting a battle that had nothing to do with Iasmin Lucindo.