After Cung Le’s recent win over Patrick Cote, UFC president Dana White made it clear he was targeting the sanshou expert for the UFC’s first visit to China in November at ‘UFC On Fuel TV 6’, and today he revealed he wants him to fight.
“If he fights in China, he will fight Rich Franklin,” White revealed to MMAjunkie at today’s UFC 149 pre-fight press conference.
There’s a catch though. Le injured his foot during his victory over Cote and it’s currently in a cast so how quickly that heals will determine whether the former Strikeforce middleweight champion will be ready in time for the show.
Le Vs Franklin was in fact already slated to take place at the recent UFC 148 event, but due to injuries elsewhere Franklin ended up being called over To Brazil to face Wanderlei Silva in the main event of UFC 147 instead.
Franklin won that fight, so a fight with Le still makes a lot of sense as these two veterans look to make a sustained push up the middleweight ranks.
The fight would certainly be the main event of the ‘UFC On Fuel TV’ card and not only would it be the most marketable headliner so far in the series of live events on the channel, but it’d also be a respectable showpiece to break into a potentially big new market like China.
