Usman Blasts ‘Disrespectful’ Fans For Calling Him ‘Washed’

You take a year off from competition to heal some injuries and the whole fandom turns against you. That’s not cool, according to Kamaru Usman.

Kamaru Usman is not impressed with fans who are calling him washed up as he prepares to re-enter competition following self-imposed, year-long break.

“The Nigerian Nightmare” grinded out nine fights in five years, winning the welterweight belt and defending it five times. But after two back-to-back defeats to Leon Edwards followed by a tough decision loss to Khamzat Chimaev (which some feel he won), he’s been seeing a lot of disrespect from fans, whose voices have only grown louder after he took time off to heal some nagging injuries.

Usman took those haters to task on a recent episode of the Weighing In podcast.

“I didn’t care what I was going through, I didn’t care what I was dealing with, I didn’t care what I was battling physically, mentally, emotionally, it didn’t matter to me,” he said. “I was going to jump in there and perform, and perform, and perform. The same thing as Israel Adesanya, which is why you saw a ton of those title defenses, and I’m sure Alexander Volkanovski, who also came out and expressed that sometimes.”

“We do these things, to jump in and go and go and go, to try to entertain the masses,” he continued. “And of course, we reap the benefits that come with that. We get the checks that come with that. Now, I’m in a place where okay, with all of that comes a lot of injuries. All the things that you’ve been dealing with, it catches up to you.”

“You stack up all of these injuries over time, it starts to diminish your performances to where people start to forget how good that you are, just how much time you spent building your career, doing the things that made you successful to where they start to go, ‘Oh, he’s washed,’ which is … how disrespectful are MMA fans? How disrespectful are they?”

“‘Oh, he’s washed. Oh, he can’t do this anymore, he’s not that.’ They were saying that before Jon Jones came back and then fought Ciryl Gane.”

MMA is definitely a ‘What have you done for me lately’ sport, and it’s been a tough couple of years for Usman’s record. Combine that with reports that his knees are so shot he has to walk down stairs backwards, and we’re not surprised he hears a lot of doubters questioning his ability to win at the highest level.

Fortunately for him, the UFC still values his skills and accomplishments. To the point where there are rumors they’re considering Kamaru Usman as new welterweight champion Belal Muhammad’s next title defense over Shavkat Rakhmonov, who is riding a six fight UFC win streak (and undefeated 18 fight win streak overall).

Kamaru Usman is still ranked No. 2 at welterweight, and his run as champ speaks for itself. If he doesn’t snatch Shavkat’s title shot from under him, he’s one win away from next in line. So when you’ve got that kind of positioning amongst those that matter, who cares what the fans think?