UFC President Dana White believes it is time for Junior Dos Santos to start considering his future in fighting.
UFC President Dana White believes former UFC heavyweight champion Junior Dos Santos has a lot to think about as far as future in fighting is concerned.
Dos Santos met undefeated prospect Ciryl Gane in the opening bout of the main card of UFC 256. After a solid first round by both men, Dos Santos was hurt in the second round by a stiff jab from Gane that saw him turn away from his opponent. Gane followed up with an elbow that appeared to teeter on the edge of legality due to its placement, but ultimately brought about the end of the fight.
Dos Santos and the UFC color commentary team immediately started pointing out that the fight-ending blow could have been illegal since it was borderline on the back of the head of “Cigano”, but that was seemingly dispelled after seeing multiple angles of the elbow. In the end, Dos Santos had suffered his fourth straight loss, which have all come by way of technical knockout. For White, he did not see a problem with the stoppage and suggested it was the right call.
“I don’t know, you guys tell me what you think, but what I saw was that Junior had gotten hurt,” said White during his post-fight press conference. “He got rocked and he was almost walking away and turning his back to him and Ciryl was throwing shots at him and then threw an elbow. I mean they were squared up. You turned your back and he caught you on the back of the head.”
Having now gone on a career-worst four-fight losing streak, Dos Santos is seemingly in danger of being one of the names to be cut from the roster, which is something he said he was not worried about before the Gane fight.
White was asked whether Dos Santos would now be part of the string of roster cuts that have been happening recently and alluded to it being a real possibility.
“I mean that’s every weekend,” said White. “We’ll be talking about this next weekend, too, after the fights. It’s just part of the sport. I think over the next — between last year and next year, you’re going to see a lot of the old, big names moving on and retiring.”