Bo Nickal has a message for the haters after the RAF 5 situation: you don’t know ball.
This past weekend, Nickal was supposed to wrestle one-time Olympic silver medalist Yoel Romero at RAF 5, in one of the most anticipated bouts on the card. But on Saturday morning, Romero missed weight by seven pounds, coming in at 212 pounds for their 205-pound matchup. As a result, Nickal refused to wrestle Romero, and on Monday, the UFC middleweight explained his reasoning to Ariel Helwani.
“It was tough,” Nickal
said. “It was a tough situation. I got there in Florida, had all my family and friends down, and was looking forward to competing. Saturday morning at weigh-ins, I weighed in right at 9 a.m. I woke up around 203, ate and drank to get up to 205, waited around 45 minutes for Yoel to get there, and he waited a while. So once he didn’t step on the scale right away, I kind of knew he was over. I expected two, three, four pounds, and no worries. We’ll get it going. But he stepped on at 212.
“So, that was something I was just like, wow, seven pounds over. This is a tough situation. I obviously want to compete, but I spoke with my coaches, my team, and we felt that it was best to move on from that, just because part of wrestling is making weight. That’s something you grow up doing, and it’s just part of the sport. Any other tournament, it’s not like, ‘Oh, you don’t make weight? You still get to compete.’ It’s not part of the sport as it is in MMA. It’s very common in MMA, but as a wrestler, I wanted to have respect for the sport.
“And also, just feeling like him coming down from 225-230, me at 205, I’m just like, I felt like I signed a contract at this weight, that’s what I expect to do. If he was two, three, four pounds over, we could probably make it work. But that was just a lot to accept. So as a team, we felt like it was best to not take the match.”
Romero instead faced 2025 NCAA champion Stephen Buchanan, losing by tech fall, and Nickal withdrew from the event entirely. That decision earned Nickal some flak from fans and fellow competitors, who felt he should have competed despite Romero’s egregious weight miss, but Nickal isn’t paying any attention to that.
“Most people that say that have never competed at a high level in their life, or competed in general,” Nickal said. “The response from every single one of my peers in wrestling, they were shocked, and they were shocked I was even considering taking it, because it did take me a couple hours to figure it out. Every single person I talked to, coaches, teammates, they were like, ‘Man, this is part of the sport. You don’t make weight, you don’t wrestle.’
“It was hard for me, because, obviously, I’m a competitor. I spent a lot of time prepping, getting ready, I had a ton of people down there. It was difficult. But I think anybody that’s competed at a high level, that has respect for their sport, they all understood where I was coming from.
“People want to see me compete, which, I do too, but they don’t understand what it’s like to be in that position. This is not fun and games. This is not a charity match. This is a professional sporting event. I came in professional, and unfortunately, he didn’t. It is what it is. I was ready to wrestle. If he made the weight, we’re going, obviously. So that’s not on me.”
Nickal remains the RAF light heavyweight champion, and despite the loss, Romero is still one of the biggest names with RAF.
As such, there was immediately speculation about Nickal and Romero maybe trying to make something happen in the future, and while Nickal won’t entirely rule it out, he believes it’s unlikely to happen. Instead, he’d like to work with the former world champion.
“I think I’m done, just because I don’t think he can make the weight,” Nickal said. “I’m an ‘85er, I’m coming up to 205. I’ve got to go up another seven pounds? I’m already giving concessions to try and make it happen. To me, I think that he should just compete at heavyweight, and that’s fine. We’re different weight classes. It’s no big deal.
“I would love to train with the guy, I’d love to get some work in, but this is professional sports. It’s not just a fun, charity match.”
