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“This is a guy I’ve been wanting to fight for a minute, so if there’s an interim then yeah, hell yeah, let’s do it.”
Dominick Reyes was hoping to secure an immediate rematch with Jon Jones, but after ‘Bones’s’ latest run-in with the law, ‘The Devastator’ isn’t so confident Jones will make it to the ring.
If that’s the case, and Jones remains absent for the foreseeable future, Reyes is willing to fight top-five UFC light heavyweight Jan Blachowicz for the interim light heavyweight title to set up a rematch.
“I think he’s a fantastic fighter,” Reyes said of Blachowicz on a recent episode of What the Heck. “I think he’s one of the most technical guys in the division. I think he has some really good power. I think he’s just a technical beast and he has a lot of experience to where he’s wise with his technical ability. I’ve been wanting to fight Jan since I beat Jared Cannonier.
“I don’t know if you guys know or remember, I called him out right after the fight. This is a guy I’ve been wanting to fight for a minute, so if there’s an interim then yeah, hell yeah, let’s do it. But I think we’re gonna get that rematch first.”
Reyes (12-1 MMA, 6-1 UFC) dropped a unanimous decision to Jones earlier this year at UFC 247 but many pundits had Jones losing the fight. With wins over Chris Weidman, Volkan Oezdemir and Ovince Saint Preux, and a razor close decision loss to Jones, Reyes believes has has set the new standard for the rest of the division and looks forward to the future of light heavyweight.
“I freakin’ love it,” Reyes said of the state of the light heavyweight division. “When I first got in the UFC, I was just always talking about trying to revive the division, being the new face of 205. We’ve got guys coming up, but I’m just the leader of the class. And that’s exactly what’s happening. The division is gonna be exciting as long as I’m in the division. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. There’s a lot of great matchups out there for me. The list is so long now, it’s so exciting. I’ll just throw out a couple of names of guys that I respect in the division that I think I’ll fight in the future.
“So we’ve got Aleksander Rakic, we’ve got [Ion] Cutelaba, we’ve got [Prochazka], but we’ve got to see how how he fights. Corey Anderson, Johnny Walker, Jan, Thiago, this is gonna be great. This is gonna be a fun next seven or eight years.”
Reyes is currently ranked No. 1 in the UFC light heavyweight rankings and No. 15 in the UFC men’s pound-for-pound rankings.