Luke Rockhold may just be coming off a tough loss to Yoel Romero on Saturday night, but that didn’t stop Alexander Gustafsson from calling him out on Tuesday.
Prior to the event Rockhold had indicated that a move up to light-heavyweight might be on the cards for him, and as such Gustafsson apparently saw the former middleweight champion as fair game despite the fact his intended target had just been KO’d.
“@lukerockhold , your teammate [Daniel Cormier] is holding MY Division hostage, and you think there are only easy fights at LHW,” Gustafsson wrote on Twitter. “If u think Romero hits hard, then wait till you come to the big boys. I want @dc_mma , and knocking u out will keep me warm in the meantime. Beware of coming up in weight because I will be standing at the front door waiting.”
Gustafsson’s call-out didn’t sit well with current light-heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier, who is also a long-time training partner and friend of Rockhold, and so he has since decided to step in to put the Swedish star on blast.
“Nice timing Alexander(kick him while he’s down huh),” Cormier wrote. “I got a better idea tho he doesn’t fight you next. He fights Robert Whitaker, I mean sometimes that happens right. You lose your way into a title shot! #thegustafsonway.”
DC is referring to Gustafsson getting the opportunity to fight him for the title despite having lost to Anthony Johnson in his previous fight.
However, ‘The Mauler’ gave Cormier a real run for his money when they did fight, but though he only emerged with a split decision victory that night, DC claims that he deliberately made it a tougher fight than it needed to be to prove a point.
“It was tough because I fought him that way,” Cormier said of his first fight with Gustafsson. “I could have made the whole fight look like round 1. Think about this tho. He lost a 5 round stand up fight to me. By the end of the fight he was the one wrestling lol.
“2015 was big year for me. With the way I won belt all the fake champ claims I felt I had to prove something. Had to do it better than Jones. Do something to try and clear the shadow a bit. So I fought him like that. We fight again tho he’s on his back whole fight.”
A rematch between Cormier and Gustafsson would make more sense later on in the year than having the Swede fight Rockhold, but for the time being DC has other fish to fry as he’s already signed up to a superfight with heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic at UFC 226 in July.
