Luke Rockhold may be back in the title picture at middleweight after his victory over David Branch this past weekend at UFC fight Night 116, but it sounds as if he doesn’t plan to remain at 185lbs in the longer term.
Asked post-fight whether he’d struggled with a tough weight cut, Rockhold shrugged it off, but indicated that a move to light-heavyweight is likely to be on the cards for him at some stage in the future.
“The weight cut was pretty good, let my body adjust to that. This weight won’t happen forever,” Rockhold said on the UFC post fight show on FOX Sports 1. “Maybe D.C. [Daniel Cormier] will find retirement soon, I’ll have to move up and take on the next division.”
Rockhold is of course a long-time training partner of Cormier, so perhaps he knows something that we don’t about when the current light-heavyweight champion may be looking to hang up his gloves.
In the mean time though, the 32-year-old Rockhold still has unfinished business at middleweight.
His next step in the division remains unclear though as the winner of Michael Bisping Vs Georges St-Pierre later this year should then be fighting interim champ Robert Whittaker, while another of his rivals, Chris Weidman is in the midst of a three-fight losing slump.
Perhaps Yoel Romero would be an alternative option to keep Rockhold active in the mean time, but for now it seems he’s most enthused about the idea of one day stepping up to take on the cream of the crop at 205lbs.
“I’d love to go to light heavyweight. I’d do really well. In the gym, it’s more natural for me. I think I could do things. But ‘DC’ is obviously the man in the division right now. I’m not going up until he gets out. If he goes up or he retires, you can damn well guarantee I’m coming up.”
