Yoel Romero recently revealed that he won’t be able to compete this November at UFC 230 as the fighter is still recovering from surgery to repair a damaged orbital socket.
Paulo Costa currently has no opponent for the event, but a fellow Brazilian fighter is willing to step in there to meet the slugger.
That fighter is Antonio Carlos Jr., who revealed his intentions via Twitter:
Hey @BorrachinhaMMA ! Let me fill in for Romero! Lets let the world see how our sparring used to go!!! @ufc @danawhite @Mickmaynard2
— Cara de Sapato (@caradesapatojr) August 21, 2018
A huge problem with that request is that Carlos Jr. has already agreed to fight Elias Theodorou this September at UFC Fight Night Sao Paulo.
Costa may have already dashed the dreams of Carlos Jr., as the fighter has stated that he'll wait for Romero to fully recover instead of staying on the UFC 230 card.
"I just heard about this news. It seems like he wants more time to train and get ready for our fight, but it will happen,” Costa told Combate. “I'm going to wait for him to return, give him the time he needs to train and what he thinks [is] necessary to get ready for our fight. It should happen early next year. There’s no reason to take another fight before [Romero]. He is the first place in the [UFC] ranking, so there is no better fighter to fight, since [Kelvin] Gastelum vs. Whittaker is booked for the [middleweight] title. This is the fight to be done, we will wait to beat him and continue my journey to the belt.”
UFC 230 takes place on Saturday, November 3 from Madison Square Garden in New York, New York with no main event announced as of yet. Fightful is providing live coverage of the event, with a post-show podcast to follow.
