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Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president Dana White has confirmed that a trilogy fight between current Heavyweight champion, Stipe Miocic, and ex-division king, Daniel Cormier, will be the next big fight in the Heavyweight division.
Unfortunately, it likely wont happen for a while, as “DC” says summer of 2020 seems like the only feasible timeline for he and Stipe to settle the score.
“There’s no time for us to fight until maybe June. The way the UFC quarterly schedule is looking, the UFC essentially, with them announcing Tony (Ferguson) and Khabib (Nurmagomedov) for April, there’s really no time,” Cormier told MMA Junkie.
To hear Daniel tell it, he wants to roll sooner, rather than later, but since he is no longer the champion he can’t dictate when and where it will happen. But after undergoing back surgery last year, he says he’s feeling better and feels his training camp will only improve, as will his performance.
“I’m ready to go, but he’s the champ. He’s the champ, he makes the rules. So I’m on standby and I’m waiting to see when this guy says that we’re going to fight. When he does, I’ll be prepared. I’ll be ready – even more prepared than the last time because I feel I can prepare better from the very start right now,” he said.
UFC has already announced a couple of major fights to kick off 2020, including Donald Cerrone vs Conor McGregor at UFC 246 in January, Jon Jones vs Dominick Reyes at UFC 247 in February, Weili Zhang vs Joanna Jedrzejczyk at UFC 248 in March, as well aforementioned Lightweight title fight between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson set for UFC 249 on April 18.
With the first quarter of pay-per-view (PPV) events in 2020 already having headliners, Stipe vs Cormier 3 likely won’t land on any of those, unless UFC doubles up with championship fights on one of those cards.
“We’re going to be waiting a little bit. It’s tricky. I would like it to happen sooner than later, that’s all I would like to say. But, the further I get away from this surgery, the better I’ll be,” he added.
“They told me when I did it (surgery), after about a year is when it would really start to feel everything was back in order and I’m starting to feel that now. I feel like the more time I get away from last year’s back surgery, the better I feel, and I’m starting to really feel like myself now.”
Cormier has gone on record to say that once his business with Miocic is settled, he will walk away from the fight game. As far as what will happen to the division should leave as the 265-pound champion, “DC” says he’s confident the promotion already has something in place.
“It’s the only fight I want to stick around for at this point. Stipe and I have a fantastic rivalry. I won the first fight in tremendous fashion and he won the second fight in tremendous fashion,” he concluded.