Light-heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier’s next fight is officially set, with Volkan Oezdemir set to be his challenger at UFC 220 on January 20th in Boston.
It had been known that the UFC were trying to put this fight together for a while, but there was a spanner in the works in the past week when it emerged that Oezdemir had been charged with felony battery in relation to a fight outside a bar in Florida, in which he was alleged to have knocked someone unconscious.
Despite concerns that would lead to Oezdemir being pulled from the fight, it seems thats not the case and so the Swiss fighter will get a title shot that few would have predicted when he first joined the promotion earlier this year.
Oezdemir’s run in the UFC so far has been impressive though, starting with a decision win over Ovince Saint Preux back in February, followed by back-to-back KO victories in a combined time of 70 seconds against respected opposition in Misha Cirkunov and Jimi Manuwa.
Cormier will be returning to action for the first time since he lost his title via a brutal head kick knockout against his nemesis Jon Jones, only to then be reinstated as champion after ‘Bones’ later failed a drug test.
That had been the first loss to strikes in Cormier’s 21 fight career and so it’ll be interesting to see how the 38-year-old rebounds from that against the heavy-handed Oezdemir.
