Dos Santos happy to finally fight Overeem, earn title shot

Regardless of whether Fabricio Werdum or Cain Velasquez walk out of UFC 196 with the heavyweight title, the only man to have beaten both of them is confident that he can do it again.

Junior dos Santos knocked out Werdum and Velasquez during an unbeaten run that culminated in a heavyweight championship win in 2011. This Saturday, Dos Santos meets Alistair Overeem at UFC on FOX 17 in a No. 1 contender's bout.

"I think a victory over Alistair Overeem will give me the chance to fight for the title again," Dos Santos told Ariel Helwani of MMAFighting.com. "It doesn't matter who the champion is. Actually, I don't care about Werdum, like I said I don't pick opponents. I want to fight for the title, it doesn't matter who the champion is. Him or Velasquez, let's see."

None of this is to say that Dos Santos is looking past Overeem; rather, he sounded relieved to have the chance to silence the dangerous Dutchman, whose trash talk has left him scratching his head at times.

"He likes to talk, to promote the fight, but many things he said don't make sense to me because who pulled out of the first fight?" Dos Santos said. "It was him because he failed the drug test and he was saying I didn't want to fight him."

For Dos Santos, widely regarded as one of the nicest guys in the business, that's as far as he'll go with the trash talk. He even expressed sympathy for the problems that Overeem will face in free agency.

"I'm sad for him now," Dos Santos said. "Because that's not going to be good for him to renegotiate his contract with a loss. I'm very positive all the time, I've already seen myself winning in many, many different ways so I hope I'm able to put that to work on Saturday."