Chimaev and Strickland make weight as UFC 328 title bouts set

Khamzat Chimaev and Sean Strickland cleared the UFC 328 main event at 185 pounds apiece, locking in a middleweight title defense that now carries both competitive and commercial weight for Saturday’s card in Newark.

The weigh-in sheet at Prudential Center showed two championship bouts ready to go. Joshua Van and Tatsuro Taira both came in at 125 pounds for the flyweight title fight, giving the event a clean start at the top of the card and preserving a rare double-title lineup for the UFC’s return to Newark, New Jersey.

That stability mattered because the rest of the card already showed how fragile fight-night plans can be. Jeremy Stephens stepped on the scale at 160 pounds, four pounds over the 155-pound limit for his non-title lightweight bout with King Green. The UFC moved Green vs. Stephens to a catchweight bout, and Stephens gave up 30 percent of his purse as a penalty.

The scale results added another layer to the story around Chimaev, who was making his first defense of the UFC middleweight title after winning it with a lopsided unanimous decision over Dricus du Plessis in August 2025. Chimaev entered UFC 328 as one of the promotion’s most closely watched champions, and making weight without drama was the first test of whether the unbeaten middleweight could carry that pressure into another title night.

UFC 328 was built around more than just the headliner. The card was listed with 26 fighters and included main-card matchups such as Alexander Volkov against Waldo Cortes Acosta, Sean Brady against Joaquin Buckley, and King Green against Stephens before the weight miss changed that bout’s status. The prelims and early prelims also featured names such as Grant Dawson, Mateusz Rebecki, Pat Sabatini, William Gomis, Ateba Gautier, Ozzy Diaz, Joel Alvarez, Yaroslav Amosov, Roman Kopylov, Marco Tulio, Baisangur Susurkaev, Djorden Santos, Clayton Carpenter, and Jose Ochoa.

The ceremonial weigh-ins were scheduled for Friday evening at Prudential Center and were open to the public, a reminder that UFC title weekends are as much spectacle as they are regulation. Chimaev and Strickland did their part at the scale. Stephens did not, and that split captured the broader stakes of the day: discipline at the top, risk everywhere else.