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Yair Rodriguez vs Zabit Magomedsharipov was supposed to take place on August 29th in the main event of a Fight Night. Yair Rodriguez had to pull out due to an ankle injury and could only be back around November.
When asked about the potential #1 contender fight, Dana White said that they're waiting for Yair Rodriguez to recover. Speaking to the media (via MMA Junkie), the UFC President said:
“(Tuesday) was matchmaking, and we’re still working on that fight,” White told reporters, after Dana White’s Contender Series 29 in Las Vegas. “We want to do the Yair and Zabit fight, so we’re waiting for Yair to get healed."
He said that "in a perfect world", it would be a five-round fight:
“I don’t know how it’s going to end up playing out, but in a perfect world, yes, I would like it to be five rounds.”
The question is as to whether UFC will decide to put the big fight on a PPV or a Fight Night main event. The latter makes more sense since it's potentially a fight to determine Alexander Volkanovski's next opponent.
Will the winner of Yair Rodriguez-Zabit Magomedsharipov get a title shot?
Yair Rodriguez vs Zabit Magomedsharipov is a fight that was supposed to happen over two years ago - even resulting in UFC cutting Yair Rodriguez, albeit, for a short time.
One can't guarantee that the winner of Yair Rodriguez-Zabit Magomedsharipov will get a Featherweight title shot, since The Korean Zombie Chan Sung Jung and Brian Ortega are expected to fight on October 17th.
Since that's a fight involving two bigger names, we could see the winner of that automatically become Alexander Volkanovski's next opponent. It's hard to tell for Ortega since it's been close to two years since his last fight, but The Korean Zombie will cement his title shot should he walk out with a victory.
