UFC 324 bantamweight fighter Cameron Smotherman was hospitalized Friday after collapsing on stage during weigh-ins for his scheduled match against Ricky Turcios.
Smotherman weighed in at 135.5 lb. ahead of Saturday night’s fight inside T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, just under the maximum bantamweight limit of 136 lb. for non-title bouts. As he walked off the stage, he began to stumble before falling face-first to the ground, where his body convulsed and twitched before he seemingly became unconscious. He was eventually flipped over onto his back, tended to by medical staff and carried off the platform.
SCARY moment as Cameron Smotherman collapses after making weight for his #UFC324 matchup. 🙏 pic.twitter.com/eTBbR5BwUT
— MMA Fighting (@MMAFighting) January 23, 2026
“Cameron was transported to a local hospital for precautionary evaluations and is now being discharged,” a UFC spokesperson told The Athletic.
UFC has not announced whether Smotherman’s fight will go forward, but some sportsbooks, such as BetMGM, have already removed it from the UFC 324 card.
Smotherman (12-6) is tied for seventh for most significant body strikes in a UFC Bantamweight fight (48). A former Fury FC Bantamweight champion, Smotherman also has six knockout wins. He lost back-to-back bouts against Serhiy Sidey and Ricky Simón in 2025, after winning his professional debut against Jake Hadley in October 2024 by unanimous decision.
Smotherman, 28, is 1-2 in his UFC appearances.
Former UFC flyweight champion Deiveson Figueiredo was 2.5 pounds shy of making weight Friday for a Saturday night match against Umar Nurmagomedov. Flyweight Alex Perez, who is scheduled to face Charles Johnson, also missed by that same weight for a 125-pound contest. Figueiredo and Perez were fined, but the bouts will continue as scheduled.
Meanwhile, Justin Gaethje and Paddy Pimblett, who will fight in the interim lightweight championship main event, made weight. Pimblett came in underweight at 154 pounds, and Gaethje weighed 155 pounds.
Weight cutting is a common practice in UFC and MMA. It is typical for athletes to cut down their body weight in the days leading up to a weigh-in, and then rehydrate to prepare for competition. However, dramatic weight cutting has been a controversial talking point. Boxing rules state that fighters must make the relevant weight for their bout by the time they weigh in the day before a bout, a timetable introduced in the early 1980s.
In 2022, Chris Eubank Jr. and Conor Benn scheduled a fight based on making weight. Eubank agreed to a compromise with Benn that if neither man was allowed to weigh more than 170 pounds the morning of the fight, more money would be involved. However, Eubank missed weight by 0.05 pounds, despite videos of Eubank wearing a ‘sauna suit’, indicating the use of a sauna to sweat off extra pounds. The incident earned him a $500,000 fine.
UFC’s event Saturday night begins a new era as matches will be streamed on Paramount after the two reached a seven-year, $7.7 billion media-rights deal.