UFC president Dana White said several fighters volunteered to face Cormier, including Dan Henderson and Gegard Mousasi. The fight will be in the third slot on the main card, and is a non-title fight scheduled for three rounds, Cormier, who has been through the emotional gamut in the last 24 hours, was relieved to retain a spot on UFC’s benchmark card.
Advertisement
Jon Jones held a press conference in which he pleaded innocence while struggling to keep hold of his emotions while Daniel Cormier was left contemplating a huge financial loss and a wasted, grueling training camp. The main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims on FOX Sports 1 and UFC Fight Pass. Now, he’ll face perhaps the sport’s all-time pound-for-pound talent.
For Silva, he is no stranger in the 205 lbs. catch weight as he has fought twice in the said weight class. The 41-year old Silva beat Forrest Griffin in August 2009 and then dispose of Stephan Bonnar in October 2012, both by first-round knockout.
As for his plans for the fight, Silva joked, “I’m going to have to run away from him”.
“I’m not looking past this fight. I didn’t really think this could ever happen”.
“I’m here and it’s a great challenge for everything I’ve done here through wins and defeats”, Silva said. “(Michael) Bisping came in on 11 days and knocked out Luke Rockhold, who destroyed him in their first fight”, said White of the recent middleweight title match. After 2015 it was widely assumed that Lesnar would never return to the world of real fighting after re-signing with the WWE.
As a result of Lesnar’s fight in UFC, WWE could attract UFC fans to their second-biggest show of the year through Lesnar and turn them into long-term WWE fans too. After losing the non-title match, Rusev can proclaim that he may have lost that battle, but he is still the United States Champion and he won the war, because he pushed Brock Lesnar so far that we won’t be seeing him for quite some time. My last fight with Alistair (Overeem), I was already trying to recover and I got back inside the Octagon four months after my surgery so I didn’t really give my body time to heal nor my mind because it took a lot out of me.
Advertisement
“This is devastating to Daniel Cormier in every way it could possibly be”, White said.
