Stipe Miocic vs Daniel Cormier III Is FINALLY Set To Happen This Summer (Plus Fight Island Details)
A few months ago, Dana White broke the news to Barstool Sports that the next fight the UFC was moving forward with for the UFC Heavyweight Championship of the World would be a third bout between Stipe Miocic and Daniel Cormier. Both fights thus far have been absolute classics, and both have ended in devastating fashion with opposite outcomes, so I can't imagine not being fired up for this trilogy to come to a close.
Due to some lingering injuries on the Champ's end for a while, and then the pandemic, it was put off and put off and put off for so long that it almost started to feel like it was never gonna happen, but contracts are signed and we now have a date! August 15th ladies and gents! It's going down at the UFC Apex!
We also got the lineup for UFC 251 on Fight Island today, as well as confirmation on the location of "Fight Island"....
....and I've gotta admit - it's a little tough not to be disappointed with Fight Island being Yas Island!
Yas Island is where they had UFC 242 not even a year ago! It didn't have any fancy bells and whistles at all, and in fact, looked like a kinda crappy makeshift arena that infamously didn't have air conditioning. They just expanded upon the infrastructure they built there, as opposed to turning a secret tropical island into a Mortal-Kombat type setup with tiki torches and the like, which is what I think most of us were imagining when we have been speculating on "Fight Island".
We may have gone a bit too far in a few places, in the words of the great George Lucas.
As far as the fights go - Kamaru Usman vs Gilbert Burns, Alexander Volkanovski vs Max Holloway II, and Petr Yan vs Jose Aldo - I'm excited for all three, but it doesn't look like they've really caught the attention of the casual fan with any of those matchups today, so I bet they've got their work cut out in selling this card.
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That being said, we saw a PPV event just this past weekend that didn't feature a ton of big names which wound up being fucking phenomenal. It's all about the matchups, and this card has some amazing ones. I think it'll be good. It's just not the "Fight Island" we imagined with the likes of Conor McGregor and Jorge Masvidal and whatnot.
Oh well! It's tough to complain as a UFC fan right now. I'll take what I can get.