Dana White Says Marlon Moraes vs. Henry Cejudo Likely For Bantamweight Title

Dana White is looking to fill a vacancy atop the bantamweight division with a Marlon Moraes vs. Henry Cejudo bout. The UFC president said after last night’s UFC on ESPN+ 6 that Moraes vs. Cejudo looks to be the likely fight to determine a new champion.

“I now have a plan. I didn’t have a plan before, now I have a plan,” White said on the post-show, as you can see below (quote per MMA Weekly). “It looks like we’re going to do the [Marlon] Moraes-[Henry] Cejudo fight. They both want that fight really bad, seems like a good fight to make with the whole Dillashaw thing now. And then you do him [Jussier Formiga] vs. [Joseph] Benavidez on the same card. If anything goes wrong, one of them can step up and take the fight. Um, and then the winner of that fight is the guaranteed #1 contender for the next shot.”

UFC President @danawhite shares some plans on the ESPN+ post-fight show@HenryCejudo vs. @MMARLONMORAES@JoeJitsu vs. @JussierFormiga pic.twitter.com/2HuzxZ2i80

— ESPN MMA (@espnmma) March 24, 2019

The “Dillashaw thing” White refers to is the fact that TJ Dillashaw relinquished the title after there was an adverse finding in a test taken for his fight against Cejudo at UFC on ESPN+ 1 in January. That left an opening that Moraes and Cejudo will seek to fill.

At this time, there’s no word on when the vacant title fight would take place.