John McCarthy shares theory as to why the UFC didn’t want Stipe Miocic fighting for the interim heavyweight title
MMA analyst John McCarthy has given his thoughts on why the UFC didn’t want Stipe Miocic in the interim heavyweight title fight at UFC 295.
At UFC 295, Tom Aspinall will battle Sergei Pavlovich for the interim heavyweight championship. The fight has been made after Jon Jones was forced to pull out of his scheduled title showdown with Stipe Miocic due to injury.
Many fans, as you can imagine, were wondering why Miocic didn’t get the call to be part of the replacement matchup. According to Dana White, Jones vs Miocic has always been the fight they want, and he even suggested that it would be disrespectful to Stipe even to offer him an interim shot instead.
John McCarthy, meanwhile, has a theory of his own.
McCarthy’s Miocic musings
“First off, his age, let’s just be honest. At that age, they’re looking and saying you’re not the guy that we can build on. Yes, you have been our champion before and yes, you have the longest run as the heavyweight champion and we want to use that to sell a fight but we don’t think we can continue on selling fights with it and having people excited about it so, first thing is his age.
“I think for them, the scary part is that he’ll win the interim title. Jon’s not back when he needs him to be and he’ll just walk away saying ‘well I actually kind of won the title before I left, you just weren’t ready to fight’. Then it starts just causing a little bit of a haze over all that thing.”
Quotes via MMA News
Do you agree with the theory put forward by John McCarthy? Let us know, BJPENN Nation!
