Phil Davis Is Not Happy With How Title Shots Are Earned

UFC light heavyweight Phil Davis is set to fight Anthony Johnson at UFC 172. Coming off of a win over Lyoto Machida, it seems odd that Davis’ next opponent would be Johnson. That’s not to say that Johnson isn’t a talented and dangerous guy at 205, but he’s making his return to the octagon after spending some time over at the World Series of Fighting and for him this is a great fight against a top ranked fighter in the division, but it appears to be a step down for Davis. He commented on why he chose the fight when he spoke with MMAFighting.com,

“He’s not the guy I wanted,” Davis said. “But pretty much everyone else was booked, so it wasn’t a huge surprise, but it was like, I’ll take it at this point.”

Davis also had a lot to say when it came to getting title shots in the UFC,

“I mean listen, it can be any combination of title things that get you a title shot,” Davis said. “Apparently fighting Roy Nelson and then fighting Pat Cummins gets you a title shot. Maybe beating no one in the top 10 like Glover did gets you a title shot. There’s no rhyme or reason to getting a title shot. So, beating the number one contender does not get you a title shot. At this point, I don’t really care, I think I’m in the best in the world so I’ll just keep fighting whoever they put in the cage.”

Davis trains with fellow light heavyweight fighter Alexander Gustafsson, who put a beating on Jon Jones at UFC 165, but loss the decision. Davis found it strange that the current champ wasn’t into doing a rematch right away,

“Most people would rematch,” Davis said of the Toronto title fight narrowly won by Jones in September. “But he said, forget about that, forget about you.’ I find that interesting. Very interesting.”

Davis brings up a lot of good points, most notably, his comments about earning a title shot. Do guys like Cormier and Teixeira deserve a shot before Davis?

By: Ryan C. Miller