Junior Dos Santos Wants To Win Back UFC Title, Challenge Deontay Wilder For Boxing Gold

Junior dos Santos has his future laid out in front of him heading into a key bout Saturday night on ESPN against fellow UFC heavyweight contender Francis Ngannou. And the plan is pretty straight forward as far as "Cigano" is concerned.

Seven years ago when dos Santos held the UFC heavyweight title, he put forward a challenge to then-boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko to determine the top heavyweight in the world. Now, he wants to take care of Ngannou, challenge – and win – the UFC belt again before meeting Deontay Wilder in a boxing match.

"My biggest goal is to go back, fight for the title in the UFC, take the belt back and then start promoting a fight against one of the boxing champions," dos Santos told MMA Fighting. "I think I already have this idea in my mind who it could be. It could be Deontay Wilder because everything I see about Deontay, he's a great champion, he knocks everybody out and he doesn't run away from a good match. He accepts all the matches."

First up, though, dos Santos must deal with Ngannou. He believes nothing short of another dominating performance like his win vs. Derrick Lewis is in store for this weekend from Minneapolis.

"I'm going to knock him out," dos Santos said. "He's going to go down. The referee is going to have to stop me."