Yoel Romero and Robert Whittaker will fight for the interim middleweight belt at UFC 213

Well that didn’t take long.

An interim UFC middleweight title fight between Yoel Romero and Robert Whittaker has just been made official. The two will face off in the co-main spot on the UFC’s big 213 card on July 8th.

The UFC’s latest interim title comes after Michael Bisping detailed just how bad his knee was on a new episode of his podcast (via FOX Sports)

“I can’t fight in July, that’s only around the corner,” Bisping said. “I can’t even run. Everybody on social media saying ‘stop running from Yoel’. I’m not running. I can’t [expletive] run from everybody. If I could run from Yoel, that would be a [expletive] start. At the moment, I’ve got to hobble away on one [expletive] leg going ‘leave me alone! Don’t get me! I’ve only got one leg!’. I can’t run. I certainly can’t do a [expletive] training camp.

With Bisping’s status cleared up, the UFC didn’t hesitate and signed that interim middleweight title fight the day after.

UFC 213 is looking like a pretty great PPV event right now. Robbie Lawler vs. Donald Cerrone has fight of the year potential written all over it, and this interim title is the third belt up for grabs on the card. Women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes will be defending against Valentina Shevchenko, and a bantamweight title fight between Cody Garbrandt and TJ Dillashaw may or may not still be happening, pending on the results of experimental German stem cell treatments.

(Update) Aaand it’s gone...