Ribovics blames UFC 332 weight miss on hotel AC cutting his sweat short

Esteban Ribovics paid a steep price for missing weight at UFC 332 — surrendering 20 percent of his purse and any chance at post-fight bonus money — but the Argentine lightweight insists the circumstances were out of his control. Ribovics came in 0.5 pounds over the lightweight limit for his bout with Bobby Green, which was rescheduled as a catchweight contest, before he went on to stop Green by first-round knockout.

Speaking to reporters after the fight, Ribovics explained that the problem began on Thursday evening during a pre-cut workout session at the hotel. The plan was to shed enough weight overnight to make a manageable final cut on Friday morning, but the process was derailed when the venue’s air conditioning kicked in.

“On Thursday, there’s something that we do, we do everything we could to get to a certain number, just to cut some stuff on Friday, but they turned on the air conditioning while we were just doing it and basically I stopped sweating,” Ribovics said through a Spanish translator. “At one point, ‘We have to leave this for tomorrow,’ I stopped sweating because of it, so we got cold and just stopped sweating.”

Ribovics laughed off suggestions that the untimely blast of cold air was deliberate sabotage orchestrated by Green and boxer Arnold Barboza Jr., who have partnered on an online streaming venture and filmed a confrontational exchange with Ribovics and his team in the build-up to the fight. Some of that friction lingered into the finish of the bout, with Ribovics and Green trading words as the referee waved it off, though the two quickly reconciled.

“I said to him, ‘Keep talking, keep talking,’ but it’s for the day before,” Ribovics said in English. “It’s not Bobby, it’s the boxer guy. I honestly saw nothing of him. I stopped following him on my social media.”

Despite the costly weight miss, the victory extended Ribovics’s winning streak to two — his first back-to-back wins since 2024 — and followed his earlier knockout of Edson Barboza. The 28-year-old stopped short of making any specific callouts, but signalled he is ready for a step up in competition.

“I’ll tell you that after that fight against Gamrot, things clicked in my head, and I just became more professional, improved a lot of things to be ready for whenever,” Ribovics said in Spanish. “If called upon, I will face anyone.”