("Blackhouse Brazilian Iced Tea? Those foolish MMA fans will buy anything.")
While on Larry Pepe’s Pro MMA Radio show yesterday, Yahoo! Sports MMA writer Kevin Iole threw out a crumb likely fed to him by Dana White that Junior Dos Santos will not sit around waiting for UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez to heal from his torn rotator cuff, but will instead face a yet-to-be-named opponent for the UFC’s popular interim heavyweight strap.
"[Dos Santos] is going to fight for an interim title. They just have to find a contender to fight him. So for that one, I don’t think he should have to wait because he was going to fight for a championship. The UFC will declare the winner of Dos Santos versus "X" the interim champion, so it is his championship fight. He will go down in history if he wins that fight; even if he loses subsequently to Cain on the way back, he’ll be known as a former UFC heavyweight champion, just like Frank Mir’s second reign," Iole explained. "When Shane Carwin beat Mir he became the interim champion, so there were guys that even though the belt was out, they were still recognized as a champion. I think that situation is very simple. Dos Santos should fight, he will fight, they’ll find a heavyweight contender he’ll fight for the interim championship while Cain heals and that will be that. Just like [the runner up in the] Miss America [pageant], he’ll assume the duties [of the champion] while the champion is healing."