Last Friday, Daniel Cormier took to Twitter not to cause a beef or talk trash to a potential opponent, he did something different. The UFC light heavyweight champ put it to a vote, to let the fans decide who he should defend the belt against. At the time, it seemed nothing more than a fun gauge of interest, but Cormier is taking this to the next level. The fans decided that Volkan Oezdemir has earned the next title shot and so Cormier agrees. He tweeted at Oezdemir personally today to begin negotiations on a potential date for their fight.

At a close second was Alexander Gustafsson, but that’s an opponent that Cormier had already beat, while Oezdemir is a fresh match-up. He’s lit the UFC light heavyweight division on fire lately with wins over Ovince Saint Preux, Misha Cirkunov, and Jimi Manuwa just this year. …His debut year. This begs the question though, is democratic voting from the fans the future of booking fights in the UFC? We’ll have to wait to see if the UFC Powers That Be actually put on the fight based on Daniel Cormier’s wishes and the results of fan voting.

If this doesn’t work out, there are always superfights for Daniel Cormier just waiting to be made. There has been interest in Cormier moving up to heavyweight to challenge Stipe Miocic, Ariel Helwani even tweeted yesterday that he believed that was the fight to make. It doesn’t stop there, Michael Bisping even said he’d be willing to fight Cormier. So, no doubt the man has options.

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 9/28/2017.