Bo Nickal and Sean Brady showed up to RAF 12 looking a lot less like their usual UFC weight-class selves and a lot more like guys enjoying life without the Octagon scale monster breathing down their necks.
The Cleveland anniversary card already had plenty of combat-sports weirdness baked in, with Nickal extending his RAF schedule beyond Max McEnelly and Brady meeting Jordan Burroughs in a Real American Freestyle match. Then the weigh-ins arrived on Saturday, August 22, and the numbers did their own little staredown.
Brady, a UFC welterweight contender who normally lives in the 170-pound neighborhood, stepped on the scale at 184.2 pounds for Burroughs. The Olympic gold medalist came in at 180.2 pounds, leaving Brady with a small size edge before they hit the mat.
RAF 12 Gets Heavy With UFC Names
Nickal had the bigger scale pop. The UFC middleweight and elite wrestling export checked in at 198.8 pounds for his match with NCAA champion Max McEnelly, which is the kind of number that makes a 185-pound cut sound like a crime scene. Nobody is saying he missed anything here. This is freestyle grappling, not an MMA weigh-in, so the fun is watching familiar UFC bodies show up without the usual squeeze.
The card is built around the Merab Dvalishvili vs. Henry Cejudo rematch, but the undercard is packed with names that make RAF feel like the combat-sports side quest everyone keeps pretending is small. Nickal has been using the format to stay active between UFC business, while Brady gets a very different kind of problem in Burroughs, one of the most credentialed American wrestlers of this era.
There were more notable numbers from the same weigh-in batch. Dvalishvili came in at 153.4 pounds, Cejudo hit 154 pounds, Gable Steveson landed at 243.6 pounds, Tyron Woodley hit 190 pounds, Joaquin Buckley came in at 194.4 pounds, and Asu Almabayev weighed 143.6 pounds.
That is a wild spread for one card, which is exactly the hook. RAF is taking UFC champions, contenders, Olympic monsters, and MMA veterans, stripping away the gloves, and asking who can actually wrestle when the lights are on. With Gable Steveson also back on the RAF 12 lineup and more MMA names continuing to drift toward Real American Freestyle, the promotion has found a lane that is messy, interesting, and very easy to watch.
