Having initially been promised another shot at Jon Jones’ UFC Light-Heavyweight belt, former champ Lyoto Machida now looks to have been eased out of the title picture as he has been scheduled to meet Phil Davis at UFC 163 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on August 3rd.
News of the matchup first broke on Monday at Brazillian site PortalDoValeTudo and has since been confirmed by multiple news sources.
With this development, it now appears as though top contender Alexander Gustafsson will get a crack at the champ instead of ‘The Dragon’ at a later date. Recent twitter activity between Jones and Gustafsson has been getting a little heated and it appears that Jones’ earlier admission that Gustafsson was his preferred choice did not fall on deaf ears.
Machida vs. Davis joins an already promising card which will be headlined by Jose Aldo defending his UFC Featherweight title against Anthony Pettis and also features a welterweight contest between Demian Maia and Josh Koscheck.