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After Henry Cejudo’s retirement announcement, Dana White lays out the plans future plans for the bantamweight division.
Henry Cejudo’s retirement announcement after his TKO win over Dominick Cruz at UFC 249 came as a surprise to some. That after a solid run en route to holding two titles simultaneously, the 33-year-old Olympic gold medalist suddenly decided to call it a career.
UFC president Dana White, however, wasn’t that shocked. Apparently, retirement has been a conversation between him and Cejudo for a while now.
“He’s been talking about retirement to us for the past several months,” White said during the post-fight scrum. “I didn’t know he was gonna do it tonight, but I knew… he’s been talking about it. And you know my opinion on that. If you start talking about retirement in this business, it’s probably a good idea.
“You let that guy take a week, go home, or whatever he is going to do, and think about it. When we get home and get back to work on Monday, we call Henry and say ‘is this what you really want to do?’ If the answer is yes, then matchmaking week is Tuesday.”
While he says if the retirement decision is final, he has one possible scenario for the the 135-pound title left vacant.
“It’s Petr Yan and somebody. We’ll get that figured out, too,” White said. “We’ll make a title fight next week for the vacant title, and probably do that fight as soon as possible.”
Yan holds a 14-1 record (4-0 in the UFC). His most recent KO win against Urijah Faber at UFC 245 last December put him in the title shot conversation, along with Aljamain Sterling.