With his sixth early victory in the UFC against Stephen Thompson, undefeated Shavkat Rakhmonov has emerged as one of the top candidates to fight the division’s current champion, Leon Edwards.
This was announced at the press conference following UFC 296 by the organization’s president, Dana White, when asked if “Nomad” could beat second-ranked Belal Muhammad in the title race.
“Shawkat stumped me when he started wrestling instead of fighting in the standup, but then he forced a submission on Vanderboegh, who had never lost by submission before, and everything fell into place,” the UFC head honcho said. “Yeah, the guy remains undefeated, so anything is possible.”
“Right now I have no idea who will be next, but we’ll find out. We have a lot of work to do and a lot of things to sort out in the next few weeks. We have some busy holidays ahead of us.”
The fight between Shavkat Rakhmonov and Stephen Thompson ended at the 4:56 mark of the second round with the Kazakh fighter winning by rear-naked choke, while Leon Edwards successfully defended his championship belt in the main event of the event, winning by unanimous decision over Colby Covington.
Source: https://fighttime.ru/news/item/33431-shavkat-rakhmonov-voshel-v-chislo-glavnykh-pretendentov-na-titul-ufc.html?rand=19907
