CLEVELAND -- Former Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight titleholder Stipe Miocic was knocked out in his latest defense, but despite the loss, he is far from out of the fight game.
Company president Dana White spoke to the media after the UFC 226 event at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas last Saturday night, and was confident that after returning to Cleveland and celebrating the birth of his first child later this summer, Miocic would be back in the mix inside The Octagon.
“Awesome, and Stipe’s not done yet,” White said of Miocic’s near 26-month reign atop the UFC’s heavyweight division. “Stipe’s one of the best in the world, and he’ll be back.”
Late in the first round of their super-fight main event, Miocic and Cormier got tied up during an exchange.
Out of the clinch, Cormier faked the uppercut, came over the top with a right-handed strike and floored the defending champion. With Miocic on his back, Cormier pounced and landed multiple strikes before the referee called a stop to the contest.
“In this fight, when that fight started, these guys went right at each other,” White recalled. “They stood in each other’s face. Both guys kept pushing forward. Nobody was running, staying away. These guys went in and went toe-to-toe, both getting hit with big shots.
“When you want to see a great heavyweight championship fight, with what was on the line for both guys, you couldn’t have wrote it any better than how they fought. Both of them fought incredible. I thought that was great.”
After a string of dominant performances on his way up the rankings, including the knockout of well-respected former champion Andrei Arlovski, Miocic won the UFC heavyweight championship with a first-round knockout of Fabricio Werdum in front of 45,000 Brazilian fans cheering on their fellow countryman in the main event of UFC 198 at the Arena Atletico Paranaense in Curitiba, Brazil, on May 14, 2016.
Miocic went on to defend the UFC heavyweight championship with first-round knockouts of Alistair Overeem (September 10, 2016 in Cleveland) and Junior dos Santos (May 13, 2017 in Dallas), as well as a dominant unanimous-decision victory over power-punching challenger Francis Ngannou (January 20, 2018 in Boston).
The record-holder for the most consecutive successful defenses of the UFC heavyweight championship, Miocic is 18-3-0 in his professional career, including a 12-3 mark under the UFC banner. Prior to Saturday’s loss, Miocic was on a six-fight winning streak.
“What he’s done has been unbelievable,” White said.
