Chris Weidman will get a shot at the UFC middleweight championship if he wins on Nov. 3 in New York, the former champ said the promotion told him when he agreed to face replacement opponent Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza in the co-main event of UFC 230 at Madison Square Garden.
“I win this fight, I’m fighting for the title,” Weidman (14-3) said during an appearance Monday on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show. “I was obviously close to fighting for the title before this fight, beating [Kelvin] Gastelum and finishing him. It was between me and him, who was going to be fighting [champion Robert] Whittaker. They decided to go with Gastelum.”
The UFC announced in July that Whittaker and Gastelum would coach Season 28 of “The Ultimate Fighter,” then meet for Whittaker’s belt. No date or location for the title fight has been announced.
Weidman apparently revealed the UFC’s thinking on one of those details on Monday, saying that when his manager called last Friday to inform him that opponent Luke Rockhold was injured and would be replaced on Nov. 3 by Souza, he added, “And after you win, they’re going to fly you out to Australia to … be ready to be a replacement for the main event.”
Whittaker is from Australia.
Weidman became champion in 2013, ending the seven-year reign of Anderson Silva, and defended the belt three times before losing it to Rockhold in 2015. It began a three-fight losing streak that Weidman ended in July 2017 by choking out Gastelum.
Weidman, 34, tore a ligament in his right thumb in that fight and had to undergo surgery twice. He has not fought since, but he said he’s ready to go after testing the thumb in a longer-than-usual training camp.
“I really wanted to make sure my thumb was good — get the sparring in, and grapple and punch with it, and be OK, feel confident with it,” Weidman said. “And I did that. It ended up healing perfect.”