Mark John Yap sorry for failing to make weight as Top Rank bout scrapped

MANILA, Philippines—Mark John Yap’s third fight in Las Vegas was over even before he got to the ring.

The Filipino journeyman failed to make weight for his featherweight bout against Miguel Marriaga that would’ve headlined Top Rank on ESPN for Wednesday [Manila time].

He tipped the scales at 136.7 pounds, nearly nine pounds above the contracted 128-lb limit.

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As per RingTV.com, Marriaga still wanted to pursue the fight against Yap (30-15, 15 knockouts) as an initial match before he takes on WBO featherweight champion Shakur Stevenson but the Nevada State Athletic Commission scrapped the bout eventually.

Yap said in a Facebook post that he took the fight against Marriaga (29-3, 25 KOs) in less than two weeks’ notice and he was only able to trim weight for nine days.

He also apologized to Filipino fight fans, his friends, and family for failing to make weight.

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“Things happen. I only had nine days to make the weight and that was all we did,” said Yap in Filipino, also claiming that the weighing scale his corner brought was defective.

Yap and his team thought that he was just two pounds over the limit, a manageable amount to stave off, as it was the weight the scale showed.

It was too late for them to discover that the weighing scale they got was faulty.

“We didn’t know that the scale we had had five pounds less. That’s why I got over by seven pounds,” said Yap. “My team and I tried our hardest to make the 128-lb limit.

Ring Magazine’s Ryan Songalia also tweeted that Yap didn’t train properly during the lockdown and had zero rounds of sparring.

Nevertheless, Yap looked at the bright side of things.

“I think this is okay because it was really a very difficult situation,” said Yap. “Something might have even happened inside the ring.”