There are only so many fights Jack Hermansson is willing to take before he gets his shot at gold.
He faces Jared Cannonier in the main event of UFC on ESPN+ 18 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and there’s one guy he’s willing to face should he get past Cannonier on Saturday: Paulo Costa.
“I feel like if I win this fight, it’s probably a fight against Paulo Costa or waiting that makes the most sense,” Hermansson told MMA Junkie. “(Kelvin) Gastelum is going to fight (Darren) Till. If he wins, then that’s a fight that I could take. But there’s a certain limit of fights that make sense right now, so preferably I’d like to fight Costa. If he’s going to fight for the title, then I do not mind waiting a little bit because I feel like I should be next in line for the title shot.”
Hermansson (20-4 MMA, 7-2 UFC) is coming off the biggest win of his career, a unanimous decision over Jacare Souza at UFC on ESPN+ 8. He was hoping that fight would set him up for a title shot, but with Israel Adesanya capturing the interim title, and Costa edging former two time middleweight title challenger Yoel Romero, Hermansson knew he’d have to get back in there and compete.
He heard the UFC was heading close to home in Copenhagen, and was dead set on headlining the event.
Cannonier was the only one willing to take the fight on that date.
“The first thing was that the UFC told me about the Copenhagen card, and of course I was interested to main event that,” Hermansson said. “I had an opponent in mind, which was Kelvin Gastelum, and I really tried to push for him. The UFC wanted the fight, and we were really trying to convince Kelvin to fight me on this card. And basically when we understood that he didn’t accept that fight, at least not on this card, we had to come up with a Plan B. I want to stay active. I want to be the main event. ‘Who else (have) you got that can fight me on this card?’ The next guy that they could offer was Cannonier, and I decided to take the fight.”
“The Joker” knows how dangerous of an opponent Cannonier is. He’s coming off back-to-back finishes over David Branch and, most recently, Anderson Silva at UFC 237.
“I think he’s super dangerous – he’s just as tough of an opponent as anybody else in the weight class,” Hermansson said. “When it comes down to the quality of the matchup, how tough he is, it’s a great fight. It’s just that he’s lower ranked than me, and you want to continue to climb up the ladder all the time. Sometimes you’ve got to fight somebody lower ranked than you. But I know how dangerous he is, and that keeps me focused and motivated.”
Always confident in his ground game, Hermansson doesn’t think it’ll be easy to get Cannonier to the floor. But if he does, he believes it’ll be an early night for the “Killa Gorilla.”
“I feel like it’s not going to be easy to get him there, but if I do get him there, I feel like I’m going to get a finish, and it’s probably going to be an early one,” Hermansson said. “If not, then it’s going to be competitive on the feet. I really feel like I am the sharper fighter there, as well. But when I visualize, I visualize an early finish.”
