A middleweight title fight between Chris Weidman and Luke Rockhold is currently expected to take place in December according to UFC president Dana White.
A former Strikeforce middleweight champion, Rockhold emerged as the No.1 contender in the UFC’s 185lb division after compiling a four fight winning streak in the division, with each coming by way of either knockout or submission.
First came a TKO win over Costas Philippou, then an inverted triangle choke against Tim Boetsch, followed by a guillotine stoppage against Michael Bisping and most recently a rear-naked choke finish against Lyoto Machida.
In total, Rockhold has lost just once in the past seven years which came courtesy of a head kick from Vitor Belfort back in May of 2013.
As such there’s no doubt that Rockhold is a worthy challenger for the title and will provide Weidman with one of his most significant tests yet during his two year title reign.
So far Weidman has defended the title he won against Anderson Silva in 2013 three times, including a TKO win over Silva in their rematch, a unanimous decision victory over Machida and in May of this year a first round TKO finish against Belfort.
Those victories have propelled Weidman to No.2 on the UFC’s overall pound-for-pound rankings, just one spot behind featherweight kingpin Jose Aldo.
Normally we’d expect to see a fight of this magnitude headline whatever card it ends up on, but it’s worth noting that the UFC have also earmarked December as the landing spot for the ‘Fight Of The Year’ title clash between the aforementioned Jose Aldo and Conor McGregor.
Such is the enormity of that blockbuster fight the UFC are currently targeting The Dallas Cowboy’s 100,000 seater stadium to house that fight, They’ll need a strong card to back it up though, especially since there’s always the risk of the main event falling through, so it may well be that Weidman Vs Rockhold could potentially serve as the co-main event in much the same way as Robbie Lawler Vs Rory MacDonald did at the recent UFC 189 show in Las Vegas.
