Kamaru Usman and Henry Cejudo disagree on who the UFC would benefit more as bantamweight champion.
In the UFC 333 co-main event on Oct. 24 in Abu Dhabi, Petr Yan (20-5 MMA, 12-4 UFC) and Merab Dvalishvili (21-2 MMA, 14-3 UFC) will complete their trilogy. Cejudo predicts that Dvalishvili will regain his belt after he was dethroned by Yan at UFC 323.
That would set up a big fight with Umar Nurmagomedov (20-1 MMA, 7-1 UFC) should he get past Song Yadong in Saturday's UFC Fight Night 286 headliner in Shanghai, China.
"You're going to see Merab win that belt, and then you're going to see a big match between him and Umar Nurmagomedov," Cejudo said on his "Pound 4 Pound" podcast with Kamaru Usman. "The bigger threat for Merab is a guy like Umar rather
than Petr because if you just take Petr and you wrestle him, his defense is not as good as Umar. ... It's better if Merab wins because it opens more matchups because if Merab doesn't win, they're going to give that title shot to Sean O'Methley (O'Malley)."
Usman vehemently disagrees with Cejudo. He sees far more fresh matchups with Yan as champion.
"If Merab doesn't win, you can have a matchup with Sean O'Malley, you could have a matchup potentially with Bautista, you could have a matchup potentially with Umar Nurmagomedov," Usman said. "If Merab does win, he's already fought Sean O'Malley, he's already beat Umar – but yes, obviously another matchup, he's kind of ran through the whole division. So yes, it's better if Merab wins for that one matchup. You get that one big fight vs. Umar. But if he doesn't, there's more matchups."
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Kamaru Usman, Henry Cejudo argue who's better as UFC champ: Yan or Dvalishvili?
