Chris Weidman-Luke Rockhold middleweight title clash set as co-main event of UFC 194
The UFC is in the process of building another mega-card, announcing that a middleweight title fight between Chris Weidman and challenger Luke Rockhold will serve as the co-main event of UFC 194 in Las Vegas on Dec. 12 at the MGM Grand Garden. ESPN’s “SportsCenter” first reported the news, which Yahoo Sports confirmed with UFC president Dana White.
That bout will serve as the co-main event to the featherweight title unification bout between champion Jose Aldo and interim champion Conor McGregor that Yahoo Sports first reported on Monday.
After both UFC 189, headlined by a McGregor victory over Chad Mendes, and UFC 190, headlined by Ronda Rousey, exceeded 1 million pay-per-view buys, the UFC has a chance for the first time in its history to have three shows exceed 1 million sales.
“This is going to be another massive card,” White told Yahoo Sports. “This will kind of be like the Robbie Lawler-Rory MacDonald fight was to the main event on UFC 189. This fight to me is incredible. I really like this fight. Rockhold is big, he’s strong, he’s a great grappler, he’s got good hands, he’s got kicks, knees, everything you want. If you want to know how good he is, look at what he did to [former light heavyweight champion Lyoto] Machida [in April]. Oh my God.
“But what makes this fight so interesting is, Weidman’s the same kind of guy. He’s got all the same kinds of attributes as Rockhold.”
White earlier in the day announced that Rafael dos Anjos will make the first defense of his lightweight title – which he won in March by defeating Anthony Pettis – on Dec. 19 in Orlando, Fla., in a nationally televised match on FOX against Donald Cerrone.
White said the UFC decided to put the fight on Fox in order to give dos Anjos more exposure. It was a strategy the company used in July when T.J. Dillashaw successfully defended the bantamweight title with a stoppage of ex-champ Renan Barao.
The Dillashaw-Barao rematch on Fox peaked at nearly 4 million viewers on July 25, White said.
“The success of [Dillashaw-Barao] is one of the reasons we decided to put this fight on big Fox,” White said. “But it was mostly about giving dos Anjos some exposure and letting people see him and get to know him. Pettis had that belt for a while. He was on a Wheaties box and had a ton of other promotion.
“So some guys who were doing great things got maybe a little overlooked when Pettis was getting so much attention. Everybody knows who Cerrone is, but this is one of the rare times the champion needs more of a push.”
