The term “superfight,” once understood to mean a matchup between the champions of two weight divisions — the most recent example being Ultimate Fighting Championship light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier facing off against heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic — has been thrown around a lot recently. UFC President Dana White says the term is being “completely overused.”
Over the weekend at UFC 227 in Los Angeles, the flyweight division crowned a new champion when former Olympic wrestling gold medalist Henry Cejudo dethroned Demetrious Johnson via split decision. At the end of the fight, Cejudo requested to fight the winner of the main event bantamweight championship bout between T.J. Dillashaw and Cody Garbrandt. Dillashaw won the fight and accepted the offer to fight Cejudo when asked during his post-fight interview with color commentator Joe Rogan.
While Cejudo’s challenge and Dillashaw’s ready acceptance appeared to set the stage for a superfight announcement, the boss tapped the brakes. White said he currently has no plans regarding Cejudo and Dillashaw’s next fights but hinted that a champion-versus-champion fight won’t happen very often in the UFC unless it makes good business sense.
As an example of a superfight that makes sense, White used the match between UFC women’s featherweight champion Cristiane Justino and women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes which is expected to take place at the end of the year. “Cyborg” has cleaned out her division and defended her UFC title twice with ease, while Nunes has beaten the likes of Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate and Valentina Shevchenko at bantamweight and has defended her belt three times.
“It’s not about super fights. That word is being completely over used,” White said. “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 [Dillashaw and Cejudo] but we’ll see.”