Vicente Luque fought on the biggest stage of his career this past weekend, but it nearly got a whole lot larger.
The UFC welterweight picked up arguably his biggest win to date in the opening fight of the UFC 205 televised preliminary card on FOX Sports 1 against Belal Muhammad. Just 79 seconds into the bout, the Brazilian landed a left hook counter-shot that stunned “Remember The Name” and followed up with vicious ground-and-pound, forcing the referee to step in.
But instead of fighting Muhammad, Luque almost fought top contender Donald Cerrone on the pay-per-view main card.
After Cerrone’s UFC 205 opponent, Kelvin Gastelum, was pulled from the card on weigh-in day due to being unable to hit the welterweight limit, the organization apparently asked some of the other welterweights on the card if they were willing to fight Cerrone instead of their respective original opponents. Luque was one of them, and he was more than down to fight “Cowboy” on short notice.
“Yeah, I was asked to fight him, and I definitely accepted it at the moment,” Luque told said in a post-fight media scrum (via Submission Radio). “Even Donald Cerrone came and talked to me: ‘Hey, I try to make the fight happen.’”
However, the UFC later changed its mind, Luque said. Instead of having someone fight Cerrone on one day’s notice, he was soon after booked for next month’s UFC 206 instead.
“But the UFC, they later thought it was better for it not to happen,” Luque said. “Also, somebody would be without an opponent, so I think that would be kind of not fair to the other guys that had their fights. But if they make that happen whenever, I’m glad with that fight, too. I mean, I love Cerrone’s style, and I think we, fighting against each other, we’re both strikers, it would be definitely a great fight for the fans.”
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