Following knee surgery, Ben Rothwell looking at April return – and still wants Fabricio Werdum

Just when Ben Rothwell was ready to get going again earlier this fall, needing to rebound from a disappointing loss to a former champ by beating another, an old injury failed him.

Rothwell (36-10 MMA, 6-4 UFC) was supposed to fight Fabricio Werdum (21-6-1 MMA, 9-3 UFC) in the UFC 203 co-main event in September. But a month before the fight, he had to pull out of the co-main event when a lingering knee injury finally was too much to overcome in yet another fight.

“My knee was just too much,” Rothwell told MMAjunkie Radio on Monday. “I’d been struggling with my knee for a couple years and I had been working through it. It became the type of injury where everyone, including my management and the UFC, saw my MRI and were like, ‘You’ve got to get this fixed.’ So I had to pull out and get it done. It wasn’t even from crazy training or anything. It was just my body – I’m 35 years old. It was a chronic injury that turned into an acute injury on top of it, and I had to get it fixed.”

In April, Rothwell took a four-fight winning streak into a main event against former heavyweight champ Junior Dos Santos at UFC Fight Night 86 in Croatia. Going into that fight, he had knockouts of Brandon Vera and Alistair Overeem followed by submissions of Matt Mitrione and Josh Barnett. A win over Dos Santos almost certainly would’ve put him in position to fight for the title next. Instead, Rothwell was shut out by the Brazilian on the scorecards.

After the loss, Stipe Miocic beat Werdum in May to win the belt, then defended it against Overeem at UFC 203 – the same card on which Rothwell was to fight Werdum in the co-feature, an unofficial title eliminator. Instead, Werdum fought Travis Browne and beat him handily.

Now Werdum will fight former champ Cain Velasquez later this month at UFC 207, and Rothwell thinks the winner of that fight is poised to be the next to challenge Miocic. And that could put a damper on his plans – if Werdum walks away victorious, the way he did when he throttled Velasquez at UFC 188 in Mexico.

“I’ve got to wait and see what happens with Cain and Werdum,” Rothwell said. “I guess I’m kind of seeing the winner is going to get pushed into a title fight. I’m not sure. It is the UFC, and you never know what they’re doing. But it looked like it was being built that way. If Werdum wins, as hard as I might try to get that fight, I don’t know if I’ll get it.”

But if Velasquez wins, everything changes – and could change in Rothwell’s favor to get the matchup he was supposed to have in September.

“If he loses, I’m off a loss and I think that’s very well a fight that could be made,” he said. “Another reason is, it’s a fresh matchup. I know the UFC really likes fresh matchups, and he and I haven’t fought each other before. So I very much could see that could be a good a fight. I’m asking to fight about April, so if he fights on the 30th (of December), that gives him three or four months – which is pretty much par for him. So I hope that’s a matchup that happens. I guess we’ve just got to wait and see what happens.”

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.

MMAjunkie Radio broadcasts Monday-Friday at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT) live from Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino’s Race & Sports Book. The show, available on SiriusXM Ch. 93, is hosted by “Gorgeous” George Garcia and producer Brian “Goze” Garcia. For more information or to download past episodes, go to www.mmajunkie.com/radio.