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UFC middleweight contender Mark Munoz will not fight for the rest of 2012 as he recovers from a broken foot injury he unknowingly had heading into his fight with Chris Weidman. The fight as you know was woefully lopsided, with Munoz getting dropped by a Weidman elbow and followed-up with a series of punches. Josh Rosenthal stopped the fight, but only after the entire Frampton Comes Alive album had played on a loop three times. The Filipino Wrecking Machine is looking for a return to action in February. Via MMA Fight Corner:
"I’m planning to come back as soon as possible. I do have an injury here, but I’m not going to let it stop me. This is perspective for me. I’ve had kind of a tough year this year with having an elbow injury and coming back from surgery and then rushing back into a fight which probably I could have taken a little bit more time off, and then, sustaining this injury. Suffice to say, I’ve learned a lot. It wasn’t quite me in that last fight. I’m going to redeem myself with a fight coming up, whoever I fight," Munoz promised. "I fought a lot of times in two years, I think that would have been my eighth fights in two years. And I’m very active so, I’m just kind of going to take it easy. This is my body’s way of telling me. It was like camp, after camp, after camp. I was fighting every three, four months. I’m going to take some time off and get back into it and just be a raging bull when I get back in the cage again. I’m planning probably around February or so, we’ll see how my body heals up."
As far as Munoz's opinion on his own status in the middleweight division, he still sees himself as the #1 contender.
"Despite what anybody might think or say, I see myself as a number one contender," Munoz stated. "I see myself becoming a world champ. It’s not going to change my destination. I might have a little detour, but it’s not going to change my destination for sure."
Well if you're the #1 contender surely you need to beat more than just Demian Maia to earn that status. Who does he want to fight next? Well he likes two options and one of them is a rematch...
When The Filipino Wrecking Machine does return, he said he’s looking to take a fight that gets his name back on the map. "I’d like to have a rematch with Weidman, I’d like to fight Bisping. There’s a lot of guys out there. The fact of the matter is, I want a fight that’d get me back on track to becoming a world champ. I definitely want to redeem myself on my last performance and show people that I’m a man that learns from his mistakes. And for me, champions aren’t measured by how many wins they have, but how they pick themselves after a loss. That’s the true meaning of a champion and that’s what I want to show."
As ambitious as Mark is, there's zero chance the UFC gives him Weidman again after that uncompetitive smashing. And Michael Bisping gains nothing out of beating Munoz as a result of Mark's lopsided last fight. Maybe he'll get Jake Shields as his next opponent when he returns but not Bisping and certainly not a rematch any time soon.
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