CLEVELAND – UFC president Dana White said following UFC 220 last Saturday that he wanted to make a super-fight between heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic and light-heavyweight titleholder Daniel Cormier, and it took less than a week to put the bout together.
Miocic will defend the UFC heavyweight championship against Cormier in the main event of UFC 226 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on July 7. Additionally, Miocic and Cormier will serve as coaches on the upcoming season of The Ultimate Fighter reality series.
Miocic continues to defy the odds and make those who bet against him regret their decisions.
Despite being an underdog once again, Miocic, a graduate of Eastlake North High School, is still the undisputed UFC heavyweight champion of the world after a dominant unanimous-decision win over top-ranked contender Francis Ngannou in the main event of UFC 220 at TD Garden in Boston last Saturday.
In his five previous fights, Miocic won by knockout or technical knockout, and four of those bouts ended in the first round. It was the first time Miocic went five rounds in a title fight, and only the third time in his career that he had gone past the fourth.
Owner of the record for the most consecutive defenses of the UFC heavyweight championship, Miocic won the bout, 50-44, on all three of the judges' scorecards.
According to FightMetric, Miocic was successful with six of his takedown attempts and used his superior wrestling to have one-sided advantages in control and total strikes against the 263-pound Ngannou, who entered the fight unbeaten in his first six UFC bouts.
Miocic held control of Ngannou for 15 of the 25 minutes in The Octagon, and while in the clinch and guard, he landed many of his 200 strikes. Known as a judicious fighter, Miocic connected on 200 of his 244 strikes (82 percent) and 70 of his 95 significant attempts (74 percent).
Conversely, Ngannou landed just 33 strikes in the entire bout and failed to lock in his only submission attempt.
Including the win over Ngannou, Miocic is on a six-fight winning streak. Miocic is 18-2 in his professional career and 12-2 in 14 bouts under the UFC banner.
Prior to and following UFC 220, Cormier repeatedly denied wanting to move up to heavyweight in the UFC. However, the 5-foot-11, 205-pound Cormier is going up a class to heavyweight after previous competing in the division in other organizations.
Cormier enters the super-fight with a 20-1-0 record with one no-contest in nine years as a mixed martial artist.
Cormier won the heavyweight championship in multiple organizations, including XMMA in just his third professional bout, and then, in King of the Cage before going on to claim the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix championship in 2012.
In his third UFC fight, Cormier moved down to light-heavyweight and has remained there since, going on to win the championship, which he has successfully defended twice and retained after a loss to Jon Jones was moved to a no-contest when Jones failed a post-fight test for steroids.
