Dana White has polled the fighters and the results are in: They want the afternoon weigh-ins back. Oh, do they ever.

They’re sick of having those extra six or seven hours of recovery time. They’re just aching to spend more of the last day before the fight with dry mouths and grumbling stomachs. We know this because White told us.

“Believe me, we’ve studied it,” White said at the UFC 225 post-fight news conference. “The numbers don’t lie. We’ve talked to fighters. A ton of fighters want to go back to 4 o’clock (weigh-ins), and there’s a lot of fighters that don’t.”

In fact, there are a ton of fighters who don’t. When White first announced that the UFC was planning on reverting to the afternoon weigh-in schedule, the response from fighters on social media was overwhelming. They don’t like the idea. The fighters who were polled by media members backstage at UFC 225? They were unanimously against the idea.

So who makes up this overwhelming majority of UFC fighters who told White the opposite? He wouldn’t say. Just trust him, OK? He’s talked to a lot of fighters who shall remain nameless. Turns out that most of them want him to do the thing he had already decided to do anyway.

And those who offered different suggestions, like keeping the scales open throughout the morning and the afternoon? Turns out White didn’t even feel like explaining why he refused to consider that idea.

“We still talking about weigh-ins?” White responded when that suggestion surfaced. “They’re at 4 o’clock. Thank you.”

Call me crazy, but this does not seem to be a decision that the UFC reached after meticulously polling fighters as to their preferences. It seems instead like the UFC saw the rise in weigh-in misses that have accompanied the early weigh-ins, and rather than addressing the underlying issues causing it, decided to just scrap the whole idea and go back to the old way.

Never mind that when this policy was first instituted, we were told it was “100 percent for the health and safety of the athletes.” The UFC now seems focused only on making sure the right numbers show up on the scales, whether that’s ultimately good for the fighters or not.

The reality is, most fighters have no problem making weight in the morning. The 62 fighters who have missed weight since the early weigh-ins began? That’s a little more than three percent of all the fighters who competed in the UFC during that time.

And the fighters who have spoken up on this question, whether because they were asked by the media or not? They’re overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the current system.

If the UFC wants to ignore all that just to go back to what it was doing before, fine. But don’t sit there and tell us it’s because you’re listening to the fighters. Especially not when it seems like you’re actively ignoring them.

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.