Garreth McLellan and Danie van Heerden were scheduled to compete at EFC AFrica 14 for the number one middleweight contender spot and the honour of challenging Jeremy Smith for his EFC middleweight title.
Today at the EFC Africa 14 weigh ins, Danie van Heerden failed to make the cut off weight of 84kg. Van Heerden, who weighed in at 88kg was a whopping 4kg overweight, far too much to cut in the allotted 2 hour grace period. Garreth McLellan came in on the dot at 84kg.
No official statement has been released by Van Heerden's camp as to why he missed his target weight, but with him doing so the fight was jeopardised. After a few hours of speculation however, things were settled between the parties and it appears the fight is still on, though not without its fair share of controversy.
Danie van Heerden was eventually penalised 55% of his fight purse and will no longer be eligible for the title shot should he defeat Garreth McLellan. This news sent a shockwave through the MMA community who took to twitter to vent their disapproval - some directed at Van Heerden for being unprofessional and missing weight, others for the harsh penalties he incurred. A huge twitter war of words soon erupted involving many of the sports biggest names.
Regardless of the reason, this scenario puts a dampener on what was building up to be a brilliant middleweight clash and the MMA community have a right to feel cheated. Yes, we may still see a cracker of a fight, but there will always be questions surrounding the match-up which cannot be answered.
Update: World of warriors respond
We apologise to all our followers The cut was going according to plan until yesterday.We tried everything in our power to cut today.
We were advised by our doctors that it was not safe to continue.that is why it appeared like he was doing nothing in his 2 hr grace.
And we would have fought Soldierboy for free any way.
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