It looks like we won’t be seeing the rematch between Stipe Miocic and Francis Ngannou until March of next year after all.
Miocic and Ngannou have been slated to collide again ever since the former defeated Daniel Cormier in their trilogy fight at UFC 252 in August.
Earlier this month, Ngannou claimed he had asked the promotion for the fight to take place at UFC 256 on December 12 in what would have been an explosive way to end the calendar year.
However, that didn’t come to fruition as Ngannou would later express his frustration on social media, revealing that Miocic supposedly couldn’t compete until March.
Apparently Stipe is out until March. If I have to wait until then it'll be almost another year between fights.
— Francis Ngannou (@francis_ngannou) October 20, 2020
That seems to be the official word following recent comments from White who revealed the rematch won’t be happening before March at the very least.
“That fight won’t be ready till March,” White told TMZ. “… It could (happen in March). Yeah, that’s the goal. We’ll see what happens.”
As mentioned by Ngannou, that would mean almost a year — 10 months to be precise — of him being inactive before an upcoming fight in addition to having just three fights since the start of 2019.
However, it’s better late than never for “The Predator” who will be looking to exact revenge on Miocic in their eventual sequel meeting.
Miocic used his wrestling to win a lopsided decision over Ngannou in their UFC 220 meeting back in January 2018. Ngannou is currently on a four-fight winning streak with four first-round knockouts in all those outings.