Daniel Cormier is eager to see heavyweight champion Jon Jones fight former titleholder Stipe Miocic next, but at the same time has voiced his concern that the fight might not actually happen.
“Still nothing,” DC said on his YouTube channel in regards to news about the rumored Jones vs. Miocic title clash. “It really just feels like we’re gonna miss this one too and that’s unfortunate.”
“…It’s exactly what happened whenever Francis Ngannou and Jon Jones was the talk of the town and all of the sudden it started to shift,” Cormier continued. “Because we as humans, we have short attention spans, there’s something that way, I look and I’m gone. We’ve got to make this happen [with Jones and Miocic]. Otherwise, we’re gonna miss out on another one. This is too big of a fight to let fall by the wayside.
“I don’t know what’s happening right now on the backend that’s not allowing for this to come together, but it needs to come together for the sake of the heavyweight division. Because right now we can’t afford to have Jones missing for as long as he was last time or even a fraction of that. He seemed to be wanting to right away. It’s up to now Stipe Miocic, the challenger, to make it happen.”
Cormier’s concerns appear to be backed up by another former UFC star Chael Sonnen who has also claimed that negotiations for Jones vs. Miocic are faltering, while suggesting that another match-up for Jones against Sergei Pavlovich might now be in pole-position instead.
“I’m hearing strong rumors that Stipe and Jones is going to go up in flames and that Sergei Pavlovich vs. Jones is happening in August,” Sonnen said on Thiccc Boy. “Strong enough that I can tell you that’s at least being pursued. I don’t know where they are in agreeing, but that’s at least being pursued. And if you did have partners in Australia, you promised them ‘Izzy’ [Israel Adesanya] and you said, ‘Look, I can’t deliver but I can bring you Jones and Pavlovich, are we good?’ They’d probably say, ‘Yeah, we’re good.’”
Sonnen’s generally isn’t a cast-iron source though, so time will tell whether this particular scenario actually occurs, though Pavlovich has certainly earned the right to fight for the title after winning six fights in a row via strikes, including finishes of Derrick Lewis, Tai Tuivasa and Curtis Blaydes in the past 12 months.
