On Saturday night, UFC Moncton plays host to two of the heaviest hitters in the Ultimate Fighting Championship light heavyweight division when Volkan Oezdemir battles with the surging Anthony Smith in the main event of UFC Fight Night 138.
Oezdemir is making his first appearance inside the Octagon since his one-sided loss to 205-pound champion Daniel Cormier back in January. The 29 year-old Swiss fighter went into the fight against “DC” at UFC 220 high on confidence after knocking his previous two opponents out in under a minute.
Despite those quick fire knockout wins, Oezdemir was unable to replicate that success against Cormier with the former Olympic wrestler masterfully dispatching the heavy hitter. Oezdemir will now go back to the drawing board to prepare himself for another title run which starts this weekend against Smith.
As “DC” is no longer the 205 pound champion after the UFC decided to strip the title from him, a rematch bout for the vacant title has been scheduled between Alexander Gustafsson and Jon Jones who is returning from a 15 month sentence for his latest doping violation.
That decision to strip Cormier of the title doesn’t sit too well with Oezdemir who made his thoughts on the situation clear on a recent episode of Eurobash.
“In a certain way I feel bad for ‘DC’ getting stripped because I think he was about to defend the belt before he retired. He has the belt at heavyweight too, so I feel bad for him,” Oezdemir said.
“About the situation with [Jones’] cleared test…they cleared him from the sanction and they said whatever happened with the test…I guess if he’s cleared he gets a chance to get his own belt back. I can understand the decision [to let Jones fight for the title], but I don’t buy the story.
“We’ll see. I’m also happy he’s back because he can continue to fight and make a living out of it. It’s cool that he’s back and he’s able to fight, I’ll be waiting for him to get my fight [against him].” Oezdemir said that because there has been a pattern regarding Jones and the doping violations he believes he’ll always carry that negativity throughout his career.
“Yes, just because it keeps repeating itself, I think that’s the problem,” Oezdemir elaborated when asked what he didn’t buy about Jones’ return. “Otherwise, I guess these things happen. We see a lot of people passing drug tests without any issue and then other people keep having issues. Of course if it keeps happening, people are going to bring it up, and it’s going to stay on your resume.”
Oezdemir believes we may have already seen the last of Cormier given the fact he is set to retire by the end of March 2019 and already has a bout with Derrick Lewis next month and has one eye on a money fight with World Wrestling Entertainment super star Brock Lesnar early next year.
“With him being stripped and him talking about retirement at age 40, that’s going to cause a problem,” Oezdemir stated when asked about the possibility of Cormier returning to light heavyweight before retirement.
“If he’s been stripped it makes it a little more difficult for him to get a good matchup if he doesn’t fight for the belt. Then he has to retire, so I think my rematch would be lost in all of the political decisions.
“I’ve learned a lot,” he added. “I’ve learned the best things I could from [fighting] the best No. 1 pound-for-pound champion at the moment. I’ve been training my ass off since that fight and I’ve put everything I’ve learned into practice.”