Nora Cornolle: Mutual Weight Miss With Melissa Mullins Was Predetermined

Nora Cornolle has revealed that she and opponent Melissa Mullins had mutually agreed to miss weight for their UFC Fight Night 240 clash.

Cornolle folded Mullins with a devastating knee to the body followed by head kicks in the second round to start off the preliminary card at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas on Saturday. While Cornolle weighed in at 138 pounds, Mullins weighed in at 138.5, making it essentially a catchweight bout.

Cornolle subsequently revealed that a catchweight bout was being discussed throughout the day of the weigh-ins. According to “Wonder,” Mullins was in bad shape when they met at the UFC Performance Institute, where they were both cutting weight.

Cornolle claims Mullins immediately approached her with the proposal of a catchweight contest, which she was also considering as she didn’t want the bout to fall through. But Cornolle planned on trying to make weight till the very end and advised her opponent the same.

However, the Frenchwoman was soon approached by a UFC official with Mullins’ request for a catchweight bout. Cornolle then approached her coaches who also told her to keep trying until the end. However, Cornolle realized that the clock was also running out for her to make weight. With about an hour to go before they stepped on the scales, both fighters agreed to miss weight.

“Actually we were cutting weight at the same place, at the [UFC] PI in the morning,” Cornolle said during a post-fight media scrum. “So I was doing my stuff, we met early in the morning. She looked like super, super tired. I was like, ‘OK.’ I thought she finished and I was starting to lose my last kilo. And I still had 700 grams to lose, so I went to the sauna. And she was, yeah, in a bad state in the sauna. And when she saw directly she was like, ‘Hey, do you want to talk to the commission?’ And I was like, ‘Well I don’t know, we still have time. Won’t you go until the end? I agree with you, I don’t want you to jeopardize your health. Because I don’t want you to be sick before tomorrow, I want that fight to happen.’ So I was really divided, because I was like, ‘If she pushed and try to make the weight maybe she won’t be able to fight. And that’ll be the biggest frustration of all this last month.…I’m like let’s go for it, I’ll have less to do as well.’ So I was like, ‘You know what, let’s push till the end.’

“One of the [people] of the PI came and she was like, ‘Melissa wants to talk to you, she wants catchweight.’ I was like, ‘But I just asked her to wait until 10:30 so we can know.’ And I talked to my coaches and they were like, ‘We don’t used [sic] to do that, so go as we used to do until the end.’ And I was like, ‘What should I do, I’m tired too.’ With all [those] conversations, the person at the PI was like, ‘Anyway you have 10 minutes left so you still have to break a sweat and you’re gonna be like super short.’ And I was like, ‘Well you know what, let’s do it.’”

Cornolle handed Mullins her first pro loss while extending her winning streak to eight, which includes two UFC outings.