{"id":846205,"date":"2026-08-07T01:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T01:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/846205\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T01:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T01:02:08","slug":"robert-whittaker-wants-top-opponent-for-next-light-heavyweight-fight-jan-blachowicz-volunteers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/846205\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Whittaker wants top opponent for next light heavyweight fight, Jan Blachowicz volunteers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Robert Whittaker wants a big name for his next light heavyweight fight, and a former champion is ready to answer the call.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">In July, Whittaker successfully made his light heavyweight debut, finishing Nikita Krylov in the third round at UFC 329. The win immediately put \u201cThe Reaper\u201d in the light heavyweight rankings, and now the former middleweight champion has his sights set on a top name in the 205-pound division.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">\u201cI\u2019d love to get in there with Ank [Magomed Ankalaev],\u201d Whittaker told the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UU6-mZwCgi8\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Believe You Me<\/a> podcast. \u201cI\u2019d love to get in there with \u2014 well, Jan [Blachowicz] just had a loss, but I would have loved to jump in there with him. Bogdan would have been great. Anyone up. People keep throwing the name Costa out there, but I fought him before. There\u2019s a lot of other guys to fight as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Outside of Costa, there\u2019s only one big caveat for who Whittaker will fight next: he\u2019s not interested in scrapping with his training partners, Carlos Ulberg and Navajo Stirling.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">\u201cI won\u2019t fight the boys that I train with,\u201d Whittaker said. \u201cIf we reach a point where we\u2019re one, two, and three with me, Carlos, and Nav, then I\u2019m sure we can all sit down and find a way to get paid bank, but there\u2019s a lot of people to fight. And I\u2019ve still got some work to do for myself in the rankings. I\u2019m enjoying the progression. I\u2019m enjoying coming up and going through the rankings again. It feels like a new chapter because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Ulberg is the current light heavyweight champion, but is out of action for the foreseeable future with a leg injury. Stirling, meanwhile, just knocked out Jan Blachowicz at UFC Belgrade this past weekend. But while Whittaker might not be interested in fighting Stirling, the man he just stopped is ready to take on \u201cBobby Knuckles.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">On Thursday, Blachowicz posted a callout of Whittaker to social media.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1bij9g78 _1mt21p01\">\u201cHey Robert Whittaker! Let\u2019s turn your words into action.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Whittaker has yet to respond to Blachowicz\u2019s offer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robert Whittaker wants a big name for his next light heavyweight fight, and a former champion is ready&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-846205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}