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Israel Adesanya vs. Yoel Romero seemed like a done deal.
After all, top-ranked middleweight contender, Paulo Costa, suffered a serious bicep injury and was not expected to be ready in time for the UFC 248 pay-per-view (PPV) event, scheduled for March 7, 2020 inside T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
I guess “The Eraser” didn’t get the memo.
“We’re working on it,” White told MMA Junkie about Adesanya vs. Romero. “The only question is, I don’t know if you’ve seen on social media, but if you look at Costa, he looks like he’s ready to go again, and he’s pushing hard saying, ‘I could take this fight.’ If you look at him online, he looks great and everything else, but we want to hear it from a doctor. We want a doctor to tell us that this guy is going to be okay to fight sooner. Why rush it?”
White was originally against a Romero title shot, simply because “Soldier of God” dropped three of his last four, including a decision loss to Costa at UFC 241. But then the Brazilian suffered an injury and Romero once again found himself at the front of the line.
UFC 248 will also feature the women’s strawweight title fight between not-angry division champion, Weili Zhang, and former 115-pound titleholder, Joanna Jedrzejczyk. Which two middleweights join them in the championship doubleheader, however, remains to be seen.