The UFC have made a move to bolster the UFC 178 event on September 27th by adding a lightweight fight between fan favorite Donald Cerrone and Bobby Green to the co-main event slot.
The announcement comes days after the event suffered a major blow when the blockbuster light-heavyweight title headliner between Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier was postponed until January due to the champion suffering a knee injury and was replaced by flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson’s latest defence of his belt against Chris Cariaso.
When the news first broke Cerrone immediately offered to step in to fight on the card despite the fact he’s already the most active fighter on the UFC’s roster with four fights in the last eight months already.
It’s a grueling schedule, but it seems to work for the current No.4 contender at 15lbs as he won all four of those bouts, and against some stiff competition too including a KO win over Jim Miller last time out at UFC Fight Night 45 in July.
To cap it off he also picked up a bonus award for each of those wins, earning a cool $200,000 extra for two ‘Performance Of The Night’ awards plus one ‘Knockout Of The Night’ and a ‘Submission Of The Night’ into the bargain.
Former Strikeforce fighter Green has also been keeping busy, notching up three victories over the same period and in total is unbeaten in his last eight fights (four in the UFC). His last win was his biggest yet, defeating one of the division’s top contenders Josh Thomson by split decision and that’s resulted in him leaping to No.7 on the official rankings.
This is practically guaranteed to be in the running for ‘Fight Of The Night’ honors at UFC 178 and to add extra spice to the proceedings Green, who’s known to taunt his opponents in the Octagon during his fights, has already begun trash-talking Cerrone on Twitter.
“@Cowboycerrone I’m so excited I finally get to get my hands on Donny I’ve been waiting for this for a year just want u to know I’m going to make your life a living hell,” Green wrote. “I’m going to beat your ass every round if u thought Diaz or pettis worked u boy u got another thing coming u bit off more than u can chew your striking is last year and I’m going to expose it.”
The UFC’s announcement that Johnson Vs Cariaso was going to headline this card wasn’t met with a great deal of enthusiasm by fans who were champing at the bit to see Jones Vs Cormier, but the Cerrone Vs Green fight has met with a more favorable reaction.
Looking at the fight card as a whole it’s actually a terrific line-up from top to bottom, featuring the likes of Connor McGregor Vs Dustin Poirier, Dominick Cruz Vs Takeya Mizugaki and Tim Kennedy Vs Yoel Romero on the pay-per-view portion of the card, while it’s real strength in depth comes through on the undercard where you’ve got more quality fights like Cat Zingano Vs Amanda Nunes, Jorge Masvidal Vs James Krause and Patrick Cote Vs Stephen Thomson to name but a few.
