As soon as Junior Dos Santos defeated Gabriel Gonzaga by way of TKO domination as part of the UFC on Versus 1 event, we began to ask ourselves who truly deserved the next heavyweight title shot. Dos Santos has been knocking out guys left and right, but nobody has been able to stop him.
Rising star Cain Velasquez continues his unbeaten streak with six victories in the UFC, meanwhile Dos Santos recently acquired his fifth consecutive UFC win this past Sunday. So why not pair up both fighters and have the winner get next at the heavyweight title?
UFC President Dana White explained to us how he didn’t want to take that risk. Instead of having Velasquez face Dos Santos to see who would be the next contender, he’ll just have both of these guys waiting in line for their turn. White is more concerned about the upcoming Frank Mir vs. Shane Carwin fight because the winner there would have a chance at fighting Brock Lesnar. If say one of the winners gets injured, the UFC will already have a backup and that backup is Velasquez. If something happened to Velasquez, then Dos Santos would get the shot and so on.
To put it simple here, anything can happen in mixed martial arts and White wouldn’t want to take that risk just yet.
From UFC President Dana White:
“Dos Santos got himself in the mix the other day. If you question whether he should be or not, he showed you the other night that he should be. The great thing is, a guy asked me out there, ‘Are you going to do Cain Velasquez against dos Santos now?’ The way I see it is, and the way my luck has gone lately, with injuries and stuff, I think you keep these guys in line. You’ve got Mir and Carwin fighting, whoever comes out, if the winner doesn’t have any cuts or break his hand or anything like that, he goes right out and fights Brock Lesnar this summer. Then you’ve got Cain Velasquez waiting in the wings for the next fight. Then you’ve got dos Santos ready for the next one. I like having those guys in line and we’ll have a lot of good fights — title fights that people actually care about. (Dos Santos) can fight again. It’s not like we’re going to put him on the bench and say, ‘Oh, we’ll hold you here.’ But you don’t have him fight Cain Velasquez. If he loses along the way to somebody else, he definitely wasn’t ready for Lesnar or whoever the champion is.”
