Kamaru Usman doesn’t believe he’s done as one of the best fighters on Earth.
The former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Welterweight champion finds himself in unfamiliar territory currently riding a three-fight losing skid (20-4 overall). Usman, 36, has been a career-long competitor at 170 pounds but took his talents to Middleweight for the first time in his last time out opposite Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 294 in October 2023.
Unfortunately for Usman, he came up short via a majority decision, leaving his future in question when it comes to which division he wants to focus on.
“Honestly, if I want to, I will be the Welterweight champion again,” Usman said on his Pound 4 Pound podcast. “If I want to.”
As long as Leon Edwards reigns over the division, Usman may need to put in some serious legwork due to back-to-back losses to “Rocky” in his most recent Welterweight contests. At Middleweight, things are a lot fresher for the “Nigerian Nightmare” and he can continue to inject life into an ever-changing peak of the landscape.
Ultimately, Usman reflects on his Chimaev loss relatively positively and wouldn’t be against a rematch under proper circumstances.
“Fighting Khamzat Chimaev on 9-10 days notice with no training camp, really, and go out there and made it look like that,” Usman said. “Give me two more rounds, that’s a whole different fight.
“I thought to myself, I’m a championship-level fighter. I’ve been fighting championship fights for over four and a half, five years. To switch up like that in nine days’ notice and fight three rounds, I kind of got caught off guard with the pacing of the fight,” he continued. “So, I started off late, and by starting off late, it caught me. After three rounds — the crazy thing after the fight, I almost wanted to … I remember back in the day, there would be fighters that would do push-ups after the fight just to show, ‘Oh, I’m not tired.’ For some weird-ass reason, it came to my head. Do some push-ups (laughs).”