A major middleweight rematch between Luke Rockhold and Ronaldo ‘Jacare’ Souza at UFC Fight Night 101 in Melbourne, Australia on November 26th has been canceled due to the former champion suffering an injury.
The 32 year-old Rockhold is believed to have suffered a knee injury that left him with no choice but to pull out of the fight, which would have been a rematch of their 2011 title fight in the Strikeforce organization, which Rockhold won by unanimous decision.
At this stage it’s unclear whether ‘Jacare’ will remain on the UFC Fight Night 101 card or not, though the indications so far are that it’s likely to be the latter option.
The Brazilian is now believed to be targeting a fight with middleweight champion Michael Bisping, who had recently indicated that he’d be interested in fighting at UFC 206 in December, with a money-spinning match-up with Georges St-Pierre orginally having been on his mind, though more recently he’s started calling out Nick Diaz instead.
It remains to be seen how eager he would be to face off against ‘Jacare’ though, with the Brazilian’s camp believing that the Brit would try to duck what would be a challenging match-up for him.
“Michael Bisping is running from ‘Jacare,'” Souza’s manager Gilberto Faria told MMAfighting.com. “He is so scared of him. He’d rather fight someone like Dominick Cruz, who I would put my money on, by the way.”
Assuming ‘Jacare’ is pulled from the UFC Fight Night 101 event, that would leave the show in a weakened state, with the co-main event match-up featuring Robert Whittaker Vs Derek Brunson being a good fight between two in-form contenders, but not one that’s likely to capture fans imagination as a headliner.
