A pizza delivery man from Lawrence is Vegas-bound on the dime of top-ranked UFC light heavyweight Daniel Cormier — his favorite fighter — after Cormier got word the local mixed martial arts fanatic missed out on a chance to attend his bid for a world title in September.

Russ Roman, 29, said he’d just purchased an airline ticket to Sin City for a December Ultimate Fighting Championship event when news broke that Cormier had been tapped as a late replacement for an injured fighter and would challenge Jon Jones, the UFC’s top dog, on Sept. 27.

“At that point I was bummed, Cormier’s my favorite guy,” Roman said. “If I had known he was going to be fighting, I would have planned my trip to that event instead. I deliver pizzas for a living, so I have to save up my money just to get to one event, so two events would be impossible.”

Roman sent out a melancholy tweet about the situation, and one of his followers, host of an Internet radio show on the site MMA Junkie, mentioned it to Cormier while interviewing him.

Cormier volunteered on air to pick up Roman’s flight tab. Since then, his management firm also has arranged for Roman to attend a post-weigh-in dinner with Cormier’s star-studded team.

“I thought, ‘You know what, man? He can honestly say I’m his favorite fighter, and he wants to watch me fight for the belt, so let me bring him out,’ ” Cormier told the Herald. “I can’t fly everyone in, I can’t bring everyone to the fight, but I think it’s a sign of showing we notice. I know there are guys like Russ out there that are really tuned into what I’m doing.”

Roman was listening live.

“I knew he was talking about me,” Roman said. “I thought he was going to say something like ‘hey, I’ll send him a T-shirt’ or something like that. When he said, ‘I’ll get him to Vegas,’ I was socked. I was getting goose bumps.”

Roman said he became a fan of Cormier — a two-time Olympic wrestler and undefeated pro — when he met him at an MMA awards banquet in 2011 and found him to be “wicked cool regular guy.”

Roman noted the banquet took place the same night Cormier is said to have had a verbal dust-up with Jones, who Roman feels is “just cocky, arrogant.”

“I was there when it started, I’ll be there when they settle it,” Roman said.

Roman said he also wants to witness the fight because it’s the biggest match-up he can imagine in the UFC right now.

“I don’t like Jon Jones personally, but as a fighter I think that if he retired right now, in his 20s, he’d have Hall of Fame credentials,” Roman said. “I think Daniel’s the guy” to beat him.

Cormier, a slight underdog against Jones but widely seen as his biggest challenge to date, promised Roman won’t leave Vegas disappointed.

Said Cormier: “I’m going to become the UFC light heavyweight champion, and Russ is going to have a great time.”