Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone will fight sooner rather than later after all.
After his UFC Austin bout against Joe Lauzon was scrapped just hours before the event, Cerrone is now expected to clash in a rematch with Jim Miller at UFC 276. His original opponent, Bobby Green, was forced off the card due to undisclosed reasons.
Multiple people with knowledge of the promotion’s plans confirmed the news to MMA Fighting on Thursday following an initial report from ESPN.
While pen hasn’t been put to paper just yet, it appears Cerrone vs. Miller is being proposed as a welterweight fight.
It’s been a long road for Cerrone to return to action after the cancellation of two separate fights against Lauzon in the past few months. In May, Cerrone was forced out of the fight with Lauzon after he fell ill on the day of the event and was unable to compete.
Lauzon then endured a freak knee injury ahead of the official weigh-ins at UFC Austin, and he was forced to drop out of the fight. UFC President Dana White later said he wasn’t planning on rebooking the fight while promising to find something different for “Cowboy” in the near future.
It appears Cerrone will get his wish as he draws Miller for a rematch after their first meeting in 2014. On that night, Cerrone finished Miller with a devastating head kick knockout in the second round, which was during the longest winning streak “Cowboy” put together in the UFC before eventually competing for lightweight gold in 2015.
Almost exactly eight years later, it looks like Cerrone and Miller will run it back as part of the UFC 276 card, which is headlined by middleweight champion Israel Adesanya defending his title against Jared Cannonier while Alexander Volkanovski faces Max Holloway in a trilogy for the featherweight title in the co-main event.
