Add Pedro Munhoz to the names of fighters who are looking for upward mobility after news of T.J. Dillshaw’s drug test failure and subsequent suspension.
The UFC planned to have a rematch between T.J. Dillashaw and Henry Cejudo following Cejudo’s controversial first-round TKO of Dillashaw at UFC on ESPN+1 and thereby continue to leave the flyweight and bantamweight rosters in the lurch, but now that Dillashaw is temporarily out of the picture, Pedro Munhoz makes his case for why he should be one of the two fighters to fight for the vacant bantamweight strap:
“Man, I think I deserve a title fight right now,” Munhoz told MMA Fighting. “I deserve a title fight. Aljamain Sterling, Henry Cejudo — more than either of them I deserve the title shot right now. I just knocked out the former champ.
“I just knocked out the guy who fought T.J. twice back-to-back for the title. I went there and knocked him out, so it’s my chance now.”
Although there was also a slim possibility of the rematch between Cejudo and Dillashaw taking place at flyweight again, the fact that Cejudo knocked out Dillashaw, who was the bantamweight champion at the time, would seem to make an easy argument for Cejudo to be one of the two participants fighting to crown the new bantamweight champion, but Pedro Munhoz was swift with his counter:
“Henry Cejudo is a flyweight,” Munhoz said. “He’s the flyweight champion, good. They want to do that? They already stopped the bantamweight
“That’s going to be the second time. The first time they stopped it when T.J. went down to ’25. Now they want to stop [the division] again because the guy is going up? Let us fight, so we can literally have two guys from the same division fight; not wait for the second time to do these these [cross-divisional] matches. Let us fight.
“Then if it makes sense for the UFC, put Cejudo against [the winner of] Marlon and I.”
What’s your opinion of Pedro Munhoz’s proposal? Should the UFC book Munhoz vs. Moraes for the vacant bantamweight title, with Henry Cejudo fighting the winner?
