The clock has started for UFC heavyweight champ Cain Velasquez. If the Californian wants to keep the most coveted belt in MMA, then company president Dana White claims he must return to the Octagon healthy by March.
Velasquez, who last defended his belt in October 2013, had to pull out of UFC 180 (what would have been his third straight title defense) after spraining his medial collateral ligament and tearing his meniscus in his right knee in mid-October.
As a result, the company’s brass had to call on fourth-ranked heavyweight Mark Hunt to face the opponent in line to face Velasquez, top-ranked Fabricio Werdum, in an interim title bout in the main event of UFC 180 in Mexico City on Saturday.
On Thursday’s weekly installment of The Download on UFC.com, White said he expects Velasquez to make his return by March, and if he can’t, the winner of the fight between Werdum and Hunt will be deemed heavyweight champ.
“We’re headed in that direction now,” White said. “This next fight in Mexico is for the interim title. So if Cain couldn’t compete again, the winner of this fight would be seen as the champion.”
Not surprisingly, the mild-mannered Velasquez shrugged off the notion that the fight between Werdum and Hunt represents a bona fide heavyweight title fight.
“It’s the interim belt, you know,” Velasquez said at the UFC 180 media scrum (per MMAFighting.com). “It’s the interim belt. We’re going to fight for the real one coming up. So I don’t think too much into it. When I have my chance to fight, we’ll fight for the real one. … That’s how I view it because it’s the interim belt. Interim belt, interim champion. Not the champion.”
The 32-year-old former NCAA Division I All-American wrestler last graced the Octagon at UFC 166, where he scored a fifth-round TKO over former champ Junior dos Santos.
Velasquez has won four straight fights since suffering his first and only career loss, a KO at the hands of dos Santos in the first of their three scraps at UFC on Fox 1 in November 2011.
Since his first title fight, a first-round TKO win over Brock Lesnar at UFC 121 in October 2010, Velasquez has fought just five times.
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