UFC president Dana White isn’t trying to book too many ‘super fights’ no matter how many champions want to jump around to new divisions to face other champions.
On Saturday night in Los Angeles at UFC 227, Olympic gold medalist Henry Cejudo dethroned 11-time defending flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson to become the new king at 125 pounds.
Immediately afterwards, Cejudo called for a fight against bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw with hopes of holding two titles simultaneously like Daniel Cormier and Conor McGregor have done in the past.
White didn’t exactly shoot down Cejudo’s request as he currently has no idea what he plans with him but he also seemed to hint that these champion versus champion fights will be a rarity in the UFC unless it makes good business sense for everybody involved.
The case in point according to White is a fight he’s trying to book between UFC women’s featherweight champion Cris Cyborg and women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes later this year.
“It’s not about super fights. That word is being completely over used” ~ Dana White
Cyborg has gone undefeated for the past 13 years while defending her UFC title on two separate occasions with no real challengers awaiting her at 145 pounds. Meanwhile, Nunes has run roughshod over the top contenders at 135 pounds including wins over Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate and Valentina Shevchenko.
“It’s not about super fights. That word is being completely over used,” White said at the UFC 227 post fight press conference. “If you look, [Cris] Cyborg has annihilated everybody. [Amanda] Nunes has beat everybody, there’s people hurt and Nunes beat people and all this other [stuff]. It’s the fight to make. That’s just the fight to make.
“It’s not about building super fights. That’s the fight to make. I don’t know what the fight to make is right now for [TJ Dillashaw and Henry Cejudo] but we’ll see.”
After watching Cormier and McGregor celebrate winning UFC championships in two different divisions, it’s understandable why so many fighters want to reach for that same kind of achievement.
Still it appears White is cooling on the idea of booking too many more champion versus champion ‘super fights’ unless it’s the right matchup to make.
Is Dana White correct? Are there too many super fights being requested right now? Sound off in the comments and let us know!
