Chris Weidman had doubters. Despite back-to-back wins over arguably the greatest mixed martial artist of all-time, Anderson "Spider" Silva, and then a victory over Lyoto Machida, some doubted whether the undefeated "All American" was "for real."
Weidman stopped Vitor Belfort Saturday night within one round, and after the fight urged those suspicious of his legitimacy to jump on the bandwagon.
"Join the team," Weidman said. "I'm for real. I feel like after the Machida fight there was a good group of people that started following and were believers, but then with the time off the haters just grew stronger and stronger, so I had to come in here and do my thing again."
While Weidman has cleared out most of his competition in the middleweight division convincingly, and there was talk of a super fight vs. then-light heavyweight champion Jon Jones in the near future, he thinks there's still work to do in his own weight class.
Luke Rockhold has built momentum as a formidable challenge to Weidman, and Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza also looms. Weidman didn't sit the fence on whom he thinks he should fight next. Crediting both men, he said he thinks it should be Rockhold.
"Jacare would be an amazing competition. I know Rockhold's here," Weidman said. "I'm not the matchmaker, but I feel like Rockhold put on a better last performance than Jacare just because of the guy he fought."
Rockhold has won four straight fights, with his last two coming by submission against Michael Bisping and Lyoto Machida. He was particularly dominant in his most recent outing.
Souza has won all five of his fights in the UFC, but his victories have not come against the same level of opposition.
[Sherdog]
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