In December of 2015, in the co-main event of UFC 194, Luke Rockhold stepped into the cage with Chris Weidman in hopes of capturing the UFC middleweight title. On that night, Rockhold succeeded on his mission, defeating Weidman by fourth round TKO.

On November 3 of this year, on the main card of UFC 230 in New York City, Luke Rockhold and Chris Weidman will fight again. This time around, there will be no title on the line, but the winner will be within sprinting distance of a middleweight title shot.

Speaking on the latest episode of BJPENN.COM Radio, Luke Rockhold’s long time coach Javier Mendez broke down this compelling clash of former champions.

“That’s a great matchup,” Javier Mendez said. “It’s a [fight] that was good the first time out. I think that Chris was somewhat surprised by Luke. You know, I’m not sure, but I think we’re surprised by Luke, so he’s going to come out a better version of himself, you know. And Luke himself is reinventing himself all the time. And he has a lot more confidence going into this. We’ll see what happens, but to me it’s always one of those situations where whoever screws up first, the other ones, they’re both such great fighters.

“That one’s gonna take it and ride it to the end. My only thought process on this is that we have more options than Chris does, so that the margin in errors is less for us. For Chris, there’s more margin of error on his part. We have less to be concerned as far as screwing up. So on that edge, I give it to us. So am I favoring Luke? Absolutely. What will happen? Who knows? But I favor Luke 100 percent.”

Who do you think will come out on top when Luke Rockhold and Chris Weidman rematch at UFC 230?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 9/5/2018.