Diego Sanchez has responded to a recent callout from Demian Maia.
Maia competed on last Saturday’s UFC Brasilia card, suffering a first-round knockout at the hands of Gilbert Burns in the co-main event.
Post-fight, Maia announced that he wants to fight once more before retiring, ideally against Sanchez or Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone.
“Yes for sure. I want one more [fight] and then probably retire,” Maia said during the event’s post-fight show (via MMA Fighting).
“There’s two guys — one is Diego Sanchez, because he’s been asking for this fight for a long time so I want to fight him in the last fight,” Maia added. “A good last fight because he’s a old legend, too.
“The other one is [Donald] Cerrone, also would be interesting because he has one win more [in the UFC] than I [do].”
From the looks of it, Sanchez is open to this bout with Maia. On Wednesday night, the Ultimate Fighter season one winner took to Instagram where he seemingly confirmed his interest in a fight with the Brazilian legend.
“Demian Maia vs. Diego Sanchez,” Sanchez wrote in the caption for his post, which included a photograph of himself and Maia.
At present, the UFC schedule is somewhat nebulous due to the ongoing threat of the coronavirus pandemic. When this crisis has subsided, however, it sounds like we might just see a Demian Maia vs. Diego Sanchez fight.
Who do you think would win this welterweight matchup?
This article first appeared on BJPENN.com on 3/19/2020.