Chris Weidman makes case for next middleweight title shot, confident he can stop Whittaker

Former UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman believes he should be the next man in line for reigning UFC middleweight champ Robert Whitaker. Weidman made his case for the next middleweight title shot on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour.

“Obviously for me that would be the best case is to fight for the title,” he said (transcribed by Adam Guillen Jr. for MMAMania). “Fighting Whittaker, that’s a guy I match up well with and that’s a guy I feel I can go out there and finish.”

Weidman argued that his accolades as a former middleweight champ outweigh his recent losses, and make him the current frontrunner for the next shot.

“I feel I am the most decorated guy in the division, I’ve had the most title defenses,” the former champion said. “I had a rough patch, I went undefeated my whole career, I lost one, happened to lose three in a row.”

Weidman also reminded that he recently beat Kelvin Gastelum, the other man in the running for a middleweight title shot.

“My mind, I felt like it wasn’t in the right spot,” he said. “I came back, got myself where I needed to be, got my mind back and I went out there and beat one of the top contenders, Kelvin Gastelum. I feel like I dominated the fight and went out there and finished him. I feel like you’re only as good as your last fight and I finished the other guy that we’re talking about in my last fight. I think I definitely deserve shot at the title. It will be a good fight.”

“If you look at my whole career, I’ve fought only the best guys in the world since I’ve been in UFC and I’ve done pretty damn good, have the most title defenses and I went through a little rough patch and I climbed my way out of it, I didn’t have any rough patches before that,” he added. “There’s a lot of losses in Gastelum’s career that don’t look so good. We have one [fight in] common: we fought each other so that answers the question. I went out there and I finished him, he had the same opportunity and he went out there and lost to me, so…”

Do you think Chris Weidman deserves a middleweight title shot?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 6/13/2018.