With UFC Fight Night 28 win, Glover Teixeira gets Jones-Gustafsson winner

Glover Teixeira said he wasn’t happy with his Wednesday performance and that he’d go back to work quickly to shore up holes in his game in case he got a title shot.

Well, now he knows: That title shot will come. Teixeira (22-2 MMA, 5-0 UFC), thanks to his first-roudn TKO of Ryan Bader (15-4 MMA, 8-4 UFC) on Wednesday at UFC Fight Night 28, officially became next in line for the UFC’s light heavyweight title.

UFC Director of International Development Marshall Zelaznik confirmed the news at Wednesday’s post-event news conference, citing a conversation with UFC President Dana White, who did not attend the event at Mineirinho Arena in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Teixeira survived a barrage from Bader that knocked him down in the first round of the FOX Sports 1-televised main event, then got back to his feet and sneaked a pair of punches through that put Bader on the canvas. From there, the Brazilian fan favorite pounded the “TUF 8? winner out for his 20th straight victory to stay unbeaten in the UFC.

With the win, Teixeira will fight the winner of the next light heavyweight title fight between champion Jon Jones (18-1 MMA, 12-1 UFC) and Alexander Gustafsson (14-1 MMA, 6-1 UFC), who meet later this month in the main event of UFC 165 in Toronto.

“To tell you the truth, I wasn’t happy with this fight,” Teixeira said immediately after the fight. “I was disappointed he was able to knock me down. … But I’m telling you, this belt is going to be mine. It doesn’t matter if it’s Jon Jones or Gustafsson. It’s mine.”

A potential fight with Teixeira is one Jones already has talked about, should he get past Gustafsson. “He’s a guy on my radar, and that’s a fight that I want,” Jones said during a press tour earlier this year.

A timetable for a Teixeira title fight against the Jones-Gustafsson winner obviously can’t be determined until the UFC 165 main event is over, but it’s likely to not be until early 2014 at the soonest.

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 28, stay tuned to the UFC Events section of the site.