As we predicted earlier today, Alexander Gustafsson won’t get an immediate rematch with Jon Jones. Instead, Jones will go on to defend his UFC Light-heavyweight title against Glover Teixeira at an event still to be announced in 2014.
“That’s what the champ wants,” UFC President Dana White told ESPN.com. “We’ll probably have that fight on the Super Bowl card in New Jersey.”
Jones had initially indicated he was willing to give Gustafsson a rematch after the Swedish fighter gave him the toughest fight of his career so far, but has since rewatched the fight multiple times and is convinced that he dominated the fight.
As such he now wants to move on to pastures new in the form of Teixeira who’s unbeaten in his last 20 fights, with five of them coming inside the UFC’s Octagon culminating in a KO victory against Ryan Bader earlier this month.
However, Jones is keen to stress that he’s not completely casting Gustafsson aside and that he does still want to rematch him at a later date.
“I’m going to fight Glover and I will answer all the critics about the Gustafsson fight,” Jones told ESPN. “I will fight Gustafsson after I fight Glover. I won the fight but I look at it as a blemish on my record because some people think I didn’t. I promise you, he will be next.”
There’s no guarantees that will be the case though given that Gustafsson will almost certainly have to fight another top contender while waiting for his next shot at the title, and if he lost then all bets would be off.
As for who Gustafsson may face, some of the opponents also currently vying at the top end of the division include Phil Davis (who’s beaten Gustafsson before in the UFC), Rashad Evans (if he can get past Chael Sonnen in October) and Daniel Cormier (if he defeats Roy Nelson and makes good on his current plan to drop to 205lbs).
