Stipe Miocic has been opining for a Heavyweight title shot, and has been told by Dana White he has missed out due to being unpopular. The bottom line is that he has to fight and win to get that title shot. At the end of the day, he is only 1-1 over his last two fights and has only fought once this year. He lost to JDS in five rounds last December and followed that up with a five round decision win over Mark Hunt this May. He waited around to see what was going to happen with a title shot, but it never came. Then he finally took a fight with surging veteran Ben Rothwell who actually has been fighting and winning.
Rothwell started his UFC career going 2-3 over the course of five years. He started his first winning streak in August of 2013 with a TKO victory over Brandon Vera. He followed that up with a huge TKO win over Alistair Overeem and a rare submission victory over Matt Mitrione in June of this year. He was going to have the chance to pull out a huge win in his fight with Miocic, but that is now off the table with Miocic’s injury.
There is not a bunch of people that could replace him, but let’s look t some fights that make sense. It is possible they could asks someone to make a quick turnaround with Derrick Lewis and Ruslan Magomedov picking up wins just a few weeks ago. Either of them should jump at the chance to fight Rothwell since with a win they could crack the top ten in their division.
If they were interested in making a high profile fight they could try to get Josh Barnett or Roy Nelson to return after all everyone loves to watch them fight. Lastly, the two most intriguing options just fought in a very boring fight for the fans but make the most for the division. Frank Mir and Andrei Arlovski are both still contenders and could rocket either them or Rothwell to a title shot with a win. In fact, Arlovski said he would want to fight again before the year is out.