Heavyweight Champ Cain Velasquez Out 6-8 Months With Shoulder Injury

Newly crowned UFC Heavyweight Champion Cain Velasquez will have to wait at least six to eight months before he will be able to defend the title.

Velasquez, who defeated Brock Lesnar in October to become the champion, was suffered a shoulder injury earlier this week in training and will be forced to sit on the bench, taking out of a rumored April title defense against Junior Dos Santos.

Dana White confirmed the news earlier today with MMAFighting.com.

Although in the past the UFC has crowned interim champions in the absence of their current champs due to injuries, White gave no indication that would be the case this time around.

courtesy of MMANEWS.COM

Poll results: Up next for GSP? Voters want Anderson Silva or Jake Shields

courtesy of mmajunkie.com

Following a recent win over Josh Koscheck at UFC 124, UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre's future now appears uncertain.

UFC president Dana White and even Koscheck's own trainer admit St-Pierre pretty much has cleaned out the 170-pound division.

But in our latest MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) poll, voters picked a potential next opponent for GSP, and one welterweight and one middleweight were the clear favorites.

They include UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva, who earned 48 percent of the vote, and former Strikeforce champ and top UFC welterweight contender Jake Shields, who picked up 31 percent.

Rounding out the list were the UFC 127 winner of a Carlos Condit vs. Chris Lytle bout (12 percent), UFC 127's Jon Fitch vs. B.J. Penn winner (8 percent), and Thiago Alves (1 percent).

St-Pierre vs. Silva, of course, is the potential matchup getting the most play. After St-Pierre's title defense over Koscheck (which followed title defenses over Matt Serra, Jon Fitch, Penn, Alves and Dan Hardy), White said Shields is up next for St-Pierre. But he admits St-Pierre vs. Silva makes sense now that both fighters have cleaned out their weight classes.

"[St-Pierre] has cleaned out the division now," White said. "Georges St-Pierre has beaten everybody. He lost to Serra, but he came back and avenged it. That's what it's all about for me.

"I don't like guys fighting each other at different weights until they've done what St-Pierre and Silva have done, and they've both done it."

Silva, though, must first get by Vitor Belfort. They meet in the headliner of February's UFC 126 event. If Silva is victorious, little is on the horizon, barring a rematch with Chael Sonnen, who's serving a suspension because of a failed drug test that followed their first meeting.

Shields, on the other hand, is available immediately. The former EliteXC welterweight champ and Strikeforce middleweight titleholder made a successful UFC debut in October and earned a split-decision victory over Martin Kampmann in a No. 1 contender's bout. The St-Pierre vs. Shields fight currently is a possibility for April's UFC 129 event in Toronto.

While sometimes criticized for an action-light fight style – and though he's fought just once in the UFC – Shields' body of work speaks for itself. He currently rides a 15-fight win streak going back to 2005, and the wins have come over notables such as Yushin Okami, Condit, Mike Pyle, Paul Daley, Robbie Lawler, Jason "Mayhem" Miller and Dan Henderson, among others.

So who should be up next for St-Pierre? Silva? Shields? Or someone else?