Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) heavyweight champion, Daniel Cormier, hung around past his self-imposed expiration date while waiting for pro wrestling superstar, Brock Lesnar, to make up his mind about an Octagon return.
Since that didn’t pan out, and “DC” had one more fight in the queue, the Olympian will instead rematch Stipe Miocic in the upcoming UFC 241 pay-per-view (PPV) main event, locked and loaded for Sat., Aug. 17, 2019 inside Honda Center in Anaheim, California.
After that? Well, it’s hard to know for certain, but it doesn’t sound like 205-pound kingpin, Jon Jones, will be expecting his longtime rival to make a light heavyweight return. And “Bones” was pretty adamant about not moving up to the land of the big men.
“He won’t do it,” Jones told Ariel Helwani about Cormier dropping down in weight. “I just think it takes a lot out of him to make that weight cut. I haven’t seen him in person, but I hear he is bigger than ever. To lose all that weight and too come up short a third time, it just takes a lot of courage, I would imagine. I don’t think he has the balls to do it, I think he knows what to say to the people to appear not afraid of me. But I think deep down inside he knows that it’s like after losing to me twice. Going home, crying and I just doubt he is going to do that to himself again.”
Cormier has been perfect in his mixed martial arts (MMA) career and would probably be the greatest light heavyweight of all time, had it not been for a pair of losses to Jones, the second of which ended by way of head-kick knockout. Unfortunately for “Bones,” the latter victory was overturned by his failed drug test.
At this point, any talk about a potential trilogy is premature. Cormier has to worry about his Miocic do-over, while Jones is slated to make his next title defense against power-punching Thiago Santos in the UFC 239 headliner next month in Las Vegas.
Expect this chatter to heat up again in August.