During the lead-up of their first fight at UFC 194 last December, then challenger Luke Rockhold was highly confident in his chances of coming out with the win against Chris Weidman..
In an August episode of The MMA Hour, Rockhold detailed how he was duplicate his efforts in the rematch.
“He comes forward very strong at the beginning, but when you hit him with something, he starts backing up and playing that middle ground game, that’s a game where he’s going to lose. I’m going to catch him with something clean. It’s going to be a left kick or a left hand,” Rockhold said.
The former Strikeforce middleweight champion did live up to his end of the deal by battering Weidman from full mount towards the latter half of the fourth round, leading to referee Herb Dean to call a stop to the fight.
The two men are now scheduled to face each other in a rematch at the main event of UFC 199 on June 4th at the Forum in California. Two months away from the fight, the champion has made another prediction regarding how he thinks the fight will transpire.
“Chris calls me cocky, he was the one speaking about himself in the third person,” Rockhold said in a media scrum. “Last time around saying that he couldn’t see himself losing to Luke Rockhold. Well guess what, I broke you, Chris. You did lose to Luke Rockhold, and that’s what happened. That’s what’s gonna happen again.”
“This time, I’m not gonna break you,” he continued. “I’m gonna hurt you, I’m gonna finish you, and it’s gonna be clean, it’s gonna be painless, you go back home.”
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