Junior dos Santos wants to prove he’s the No. 1 heavyweight, starting with Alistair Overeem rematch

Junior dos Santos scored his first knockout win in more than five years at UFC Adelaide, stopping Tai Tuivasa in the main event attraction Saturday night. After the contest, the former UFC heavyweight champion expressed his interested in rematching Alistair Overeem, and explained the reasoning behind his callout at the post-fight press conference in Australia.

”I told I wanna fight him because that sounds right to do right now,” dos Santos said. “He got a good victory over… I forgot the name of the guy (Sergey Pavlovich). And man, that loss I had to him, for me, I still these days I didn’t accept that. He wasn’t better than me. I’m not gonna say he got lucky because to get lucky in this sport you need to have attitude, so he got good attitude at that time, but, man, I see myself winning all these fights, so I think this rematch make a lot of sense now.”

Overeem came back to the winning column a week before in China, finishing Pavlovich in the co-main event of UFC Beijing. The Dutch heavyweight called for a fight with Derrick Lewis on social media days after his win, but “Cigano” thinks a JDS-Overeem makes more sense right now.

”Overeem is a smart guy, you know? Every time he’s asking for something it’s because he thinks it’s gonna be better for him,” dos Santos said. “I don’t do that type of sh*t. I’m asking for him because it makes sense. In my mind, it makes a lot of sense to do this rematch right now.”

dos Santos and Overeem previously met in December 2015. “Cigano” had beaten Stipe Miocic by decision a year before, while “The Demolition Man” was coming off wins over Stefan Struve and Roy Nelson. The fight only lasted two rounds, with Overeem finishing the Brazilian with punches.

”I don’t know if you guys watched the fight, he connected a punch that wasn’t really hard, but it was in the right place, my chin, so I felt the punch,” dos Santos said. “I was getting up, going back to the fight, but then the referee came and stopped the fight. I think it wasn’t a good stoppage at the time, one of the examples we have of of wrong stoppages for me is that fight.

”But it’s fine, it happened before and it was something for me to learn about, so, yeah, I cannot accept (the loss). I won’t accept any of my defeats. I really believe I have everything it takes to be the number one in this division and I want to prove, I wanna show all of you guys that I’m right.”