Dana White Shocks the UFC World – Biggest News Yet

By Barnaby “Mattress Man” Kellaway

Last week UFC president, Dana White, announced two title fights. In the middleweight division Luke Rockhold will challenge Chris Weidman whilst one division up at light-heavyweight, Daniel Cormier will make his first title defence against Alexander Gustafsson.

A Weidman/Rockhold title fight makes a lot of sense. The Californian is coming off the best win of his career and one the best performances we have seen this year, against Lyoto Machida, completely dismantling the man who Weidman took five rounds to defeat. Coming from a performance like that there is no doubt he is deserving of the shot.

As we know, in this sport of ours it is your mouth that gets you what you want almost as much as the fighting and Rockhold has done well in that respect too. Since the victory over Machida he and Weidman have set the foundations for an exciting rivalry by exchanging verbal blows on numerous occasions. Most recently Rockhold said: “Much respect to Chris, but my beard game’s better, my hair game’s better, but most of all, my fight game’s better.”

The man left feeling aggrieved at the announcement is Ronaldo Jacare Souza. The Brazilian is riding an eight fight win streak and has been close to a title shot a number of times. This time it is Rockhold, with his rapid ascendancy up the rankings, his marketable personality and, let’s face it, his devilish good looks that have left Souza as the victim of circumstance.

As for where and when this fight takes place, everyone would like it feature on the UFC’s maiden voyage to New York at Madison Square Garden. The company has a date tentatively booked for December 5th at the venue but as of now the sport of MMA is not legal in the state. If it does get legalised then undoubtedly, with Weidman being a New York native, this fight would be on the card. However if it does not then we can expect to see the fight go down before the end of the year. The UFC just announced UFC 191, to take place on September 5th at the MGM Grand, Weidman/Rockhold could certainly be the main event.

The problem with the light-heavyweight division is that Jon Jones beat everybody, meaning that any title fight without him does not seem legitimate because we know that he has or would beat the competitors.

This will be the case the next time the belt is contested, Cormier and Gustafsson, two failed challengers, will fight for the championship.

Malki Kawa, the agent of Jon Jones, had this to say on Twitter: “It’s as if they’re mocking the belt even more. You lose to the real champ, then fight a guy who lost his last fight? Weird.”

Even though Kawa obviously has ulterior motives, he does have a point: it is very strange for someone to be gifted a title fight after suffering a devastating loss, especially when that loss was to the guy who just lost his title fight.

The announcement is even more surprising as it seemed like Ryan Bader had done enough to secure the next shot. As well as being on a four fight winning streak, he got himself in to Cormier’s crosshairs when he gatecrashed the UFC 187 post-fight press conference and got in to a shouting match with the newly crowned champ. As a result of this it seemed like there was enough animosity between the two and enough intrigue from the fans to make it a sellable fight.

This fight could also be in line for UFC 191 in September, possibly just like at UFC 187, alongside the middleweight title fight. If not then before the end of the year as it seems like Cormier is eager to get his first defence under his belt.

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