Former UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman is gearing up for his UFC 205 scrap with Yoel Romero this Saturday in New York, in a fight which many expected to determine the next UFC middleweight #1 contender.

For Weidman, he will be looking to not only return to the win column after losing his middleweight championship to Luke Rockhold at UFC 194 nearly a year ago, but also successfully make his highly anticipated return to the Octagon after sustaining an injury that forced him out of UFC 199 back in June, ultimately resulting in ‘The All American’ needing to undergo surgery for his back.

Ahead of his fight with Yoel Romero, Weidman was asked what he has to do to earn himself a crack at middleweight champion Michael Bisping in a stacked middleweight division.

He responded by telling Ariel Helwani:

“I go out there and win on Saturday night and I’m guaranteed it. Yeah there’s no question. Bisping is going to try to ask for a couple of more welterweights and some more people that are retired, but at the end of the day I’m going to get the title shot.”

“Let’s try to bring this back to Madison Square Garden, fight here again, maybe Nassau Coliseum, maybe Barclay’s, but it needs to be in New York.”

Bisping, who was hoping for a UFC 206 fight in Toronto against welterweight kingpin Georges St-Pierre, is currently sitting on the sidelines and rehabbing several injuries sustained in his UFC 204 showdown with Dan Henderson in Manchester last month.

After St-Pierre informed Bisping that negotiations between he & the UFC failed, and that he would be unable to fight Bisping in Toronto, all signs began to point to a Bisping vs. Jacare Souza matchup at UFC 206 when Luke Rockhold withdrew from his scheduled November fight with Souza.

Despite that, Bisping shut down talks of a fight with Souza, saying:

“I’ve got a busted orbital, I’m getting injections in my knee. Now I know what everyone at home is going to say: ‘Didn’t you call out GSP a couple weeks ago?’ Yes, I did, but really, think about this, that was a massive payday, roughly $3-4 million I would have earned from that fight. Against Jacare, I’m going to get around about a quarter. I’m assuming they’re saying that I’m ducking Jacare. I’ve never ducked anybody in my life. Next week, Yoel (Romero) and (Chris) Weidman are fighting. Whoever wins, either that guy, or Jacare, will be my next fight, make no mistake. But I’m not doing it in a few weeks.”