There has been no official word from the UFC, but Daniel Cormier is moving forward with the decision that Volkan Oezdemir is going to get the next title shot. He originally decided he’d give him the next shot based off of a Twitter poll. Of course, Oezdemir was quick and grateful to accept the challenge. It’s a fresh title defense that seems to be happening at exactly the right time, but Cormier says we’ll have to wait just a little bit longer. The UFC light heavyweight champion believes the fight will go down sometime early 2018.

“I’m going to fight Volkan [Oezdemir]. I went to the doctor, and he advised me to take the rest of the year off because I started to contemplate fighting at the end of the December. [I’ll fight him] beginning of next year sometime.” — Daniel Cormier speaking to MMA Junkie. 

Volkan Oezdemir has punched himself into the top of the light heavyweight division in “No Time”, his last fight resulting in a knockout of Jimi Manuwa. This brought him to a longer win streak than Alexander Gustafsson, who Cormier has also already beat. Originally there was a report that said the fight between Daniel Cormier and Volkan Oezdemir was on track be to on UFC 219, but that ended up being completely false.

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 10/12/2017.