This past weekend at UFC Austin, the co-main event was supposed to feature a fight between two legends. The fight was supposed to pair up Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone (36-16, 2 NC) and Joe Lauzon (28-15).
Originally this fight was supposed to take place back at UFC 274. However, Cerrone got sick the night of the weigh-ins and couldn’t compete. The UFC decided to push the fight back and pair them together at the Austin Fight Night.
However, this fight would also get scrapped the day of the fight. Joe Lauzon’s knee locked up the day of weigh-ins. The UFC doctors worked on Lauzon to try and get him better, but he couldn’t put any weight at all on his knee.
The morning of the fight, Lauzon still couldn’t walk or put weight on his leg. As a result, the fight was once against scrapped. It’s such a shame because it’s a perfect fight given where both men are in their career.
Initially, I thought the UFC might give it one more try and hope that the third time would be the charm. However, that is not going to happen as Dana White said after Saturday night that the promotion wouldn’t put that fight together anymore. He mentioned that the fight was becoming another Tony – Khabib situation.
What will the UFC do?
There are a lot of questions now regarding who will Donald Cerrone fight next. He’s made it clear that he wants a couple of additional fights in the UFC. He’s trying to get to 50 fights total between his UFC and WEC careers.
The problem is that he’s very difficult to match up at this stage of his career. You have to give Cowboy a fight that makes sense for him and there’s not a ton of opponents that make sense for the aging contender who is 0-5, 1 NC in his last six fights.
I started thinking about fights that make sense and there’s one fight that could make some sense. How about pairing up Cowboy and Clay Guida (37-22). Like Cowboy, The Carpenter is a UFC legend and a massive fan favorite.
He’s 2-2 in his last four and he’s shown no signs of slowing down. These two used to train together and given where they both are in their careers, it might be a decent matchup to make. Again, pairing Cowboy isn’t easy, but this could be a direction they go in.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments who Donald Cerrone should fight next.