(Were it not for his Snickers addiction, he could have been a contender.)

You know what sends a negative message about how prepared and mentally focused you are for a fight? Missing weight. Especially when you’re in the main event. That’s what Thiago Alves did, clocking in at 174 pounds for his welterweight bout with Matt Hughes at UFC 85 tomorrow.

It’s not a title bout and they’ve agreed to fight it as a catch weight (meaning Hughes is going to go ahead and spot him the extra weight), so it’s not exactly a disaster. Still, when your opponent hits weight exactly at 170 and you come in four pounds over, it lets everyone know that one of these men is a professional and the other, well, maybe not.

What’s more, Hughes is known for cutting a lot of weight himself, so those extra pounds probably won’t be much of a help to Alves once they step in the Octagon. It just makes him look bad, without the added benefit of giving him an advantage. In the past, Alves has struggled making weight, even testing positive for a banned diuretic after his win over Tony DeSouza.

In other Alves-related news, it seems like there’s some disconnect over the Thiago Alves story. You know how Kevin Iole at Yahoo! Sports likes to seize on some aspect of a fighter’s life that isn’t really related to fighting, and then hammer that theme relentlessly until he’s reached a sufficient word count? Well, Bloody Elbow maintains that Iole has screwed up the easiest part of that formula, all by adding one letter that doesn’t belong.

You see, Iole’s story, Alves banking on win over Hughes, is all about how his family is in the banking business in Brazil, and how Alves broke tradition by becoming a fighter rather than a financier. Trouble is, a Sherdog story from November tries for a similar theme, only it claims that Alves’ family is in the baking business. As in bread and stuff.

I hate to state the obvious, but those are two very different businesses.

It’s possible that because of Alves’ accent you might think he’s saying banking when really he’s saying baking, or vice versa. Or it’s possible that Iole needed a theme quick and didn’t bother to really check on it. Or, who knows, maybe they really are in the banking business. Maybe they’ve diversified since the Sherdog article. Maybe everyone’s right.

Odds are, though, at least one person is wrong. You can make up your own mind who that person might be.