Former UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland will get the next crack at the organisation’s 185-pound title, Dana White has confirmed.

On Saturday night, Dricus du Plessis — the man who seized the belt from Strickland earlier this year — will seek to score his first title defence when he fights two-time former champion Israel Adesanya in the main event of UFC 305 in Perth, Australia, and according to White, the winner of the bout will rematch Strickland in their next outing in the cage if all goes to plan.

“[Strickland is] ranked number one in the world,” White told reporters, including The Mac Life, in Las Vegas on Tuesday. “He deserves the fight if that happens. But you never know what can happen and how these fights can play out but what I did say on [Jim Rome’s show] is that we’ve got a lot of fun things coming up in the middleweight division.”

White added: “Strickland deserves it.”

One of those fun things is the October bout scheduled for Abu Dhabi between another former champion, Robert Whittaker, and the still-unbeaten Khamzat Chimaev; a fight which had originally been thought of as a number one contender fight to face the Du Plessis-Adesanya winner.

As for Strickland, he rebounded from his split decision loss to Du Plessis last January with a split decision win over Paulo Costa in June.