After UFC middleweight overlord Chris Weidman pulled out of his fight against Vitor Belfort at UFC 184 with a rib injury, talks immediately turned to Belfort facing a new opponent with an interim title on the line.
UFC president Dana White even went so far as to propose an interim title bout between "The Phenom" and Lyoto Machida. Belfort declined the fight, and will instead wait for his shot at Weidman.
On an appearance on The MMA Hour, Weidman told host Ariel Helwani (as transcribed by MMAFighting.com's Shaun Al-Shatti) that the thought of an interim title fight was a relatively ludicrous proposal.
You know, I thought it was kind of stupid. I'm just like, hang on, Anthony Pettis was out for a year. Johny Hendricks was out for like nine months. Cain Velasquez, they just did an interim title, he was out for how long? A year and a half? So I've been out for six months, I just get an injury now that's going to (hold) me out six-to-eight weeks, then I'm ready to go. So for them to do an interim belt is kind of crazy. It doesn't match up to (how much time) other guys (have missed) when they've done interim belts. I don't have an ACL tear. I'm not going to be out for a year, indefinitely, no matter what. Hopefully this thing heals even faster than six-to-eight weeks.
It's really just a way to promote the fight. It's a way to get people excited. It's a belt, and then you can do champion versus champion. So I understand the business side of doing it. It just sucks that it's me and they're doing it with me. But I understand they want to save this UFC 184 (card).
According to Weidman, a proposed interim title fight makes even less sense when you consider the possible timeline. If he's ready within six weeks, but the winner of the interim title needs time to recover, he'll be sitting on the sidelines for even longer.
If they fight at UFC 184 four weeks from now, when is Vitor or whoever wins going to be ready to fight again? They're going to need another four or five months. So then I'm going to be on the shelf forever. Then let's say one of them gets injured or I get injured - I'm not even going to say I get injured, I'm done with being injured - but let's say one of them get injured, then ...
