It’s not often that a fighter earns a title shot after winning his UFC debut, but the former Strikeforce middleweight champ Jake Shields (26-4-1) has earned that right.
He’ll meet the winner of the upcoming George St-Pierre vs. Josh Koscheck bout and square off for the UFC welterweight title in the upcoming year. He’ll head up to Montreal, Canada for the UFC 124 Dec. 11 event to await the winner. He’ll be rooting for champ GSP in that fight, and will gladly meet the fighter at the next Canadian event.
“I would definitely rather fight GSP. One, he’s the bigger name, the bigger star, and it’s a guy I’ve wanted to fight for a while, and two, I don’t really want to fight Josh. I’ve been training with him forever, I mean I’ll definitely fight him because it’s business, but fighting against your sparring partners is kind of weird to me. Not that I won’t do it, just not something I’m really stoked to do…I definitely plan on going up to Montreal and be watching to see who I’m fighting. Maybe I’ll pull a Koscheck and bash their hockey team or something like that. There’s a possibility of me fighting him in Toronto in that big 50,000 seat arena or whatever it is. You might as well make them hate you like Koscheck’s done.”
Shields defeated Martin Kampmann in the co-main event of UFC 124 last month to earn the shot at the UFC title.
HT: MMAWeekly.com for the quote.