{"id":324039,"date":"2025-12-03T02:25:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T02:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/324039\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T02:25:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T02:25:07","slug":"payton-talbott-faces-mentor-turned-foe-henry-cejudo-at-ufc-323","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/324039\/","title":{"rendered":"Payton Talbott Faces Mentor-turned-Foe Henry Cejudo at UFC 323"},"content":{"rendered":"

Top Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Bantamweight prospect Payton Talbott faces the toughest test of his career when he collides with former two-division UFC champion Henry Cejudo on the UFC 323 pay-per-view (PPV) main card<\/a> this weekend (Sat., Dec. 6, 2025) inside T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.<\/p>\n

A win would vault Talbott into the Bantamweight Top 10, but the matchup comes with an odd twist: before Cejudo \u201cretired<\/a>\u201d for what felt like the 75th time following his loss<\/a> to Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 298<\/a>, \u201cTriple C\u201d actually served as a mentor to the then\u2013UFC rookie. And the advice he gave ended up significantly shaping Talbott\u2019s early career.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hung out together for a couple days straight. He gave me a lot of career-changing advice and tried to mentor me quite a bit because, I mean, he was supposed to retire,\u201d Talbott told MMAFighting. \u201cIt was leading up to his Merab fight; he was supposed to retire after that, so it was like, we\u2019re never going to fight each other \u2014 and here we are. He gave me a lot of advice, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talbott didn\u2019t share the finer details, but he made it clear the conversations left a lasting impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout getting too specific, it was just how to structure your camp to mimic competition \u2014 the mentality, what the body can take \u2014 and how important it is to have security outside of fighting,\u201d Talbott continued. \u201cHe had his whole life based around long-term security, like financial security. He was adamant: \u2018You have no idea what\u2019s going to come later in life. You always need to make sure you\u2019re good financially because everyone will try to f\u2014k you.\u2019 It takes somebody telling you that to really know. He was really trying to do right by me, and he was right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who knew Henry Cejudo had a life-coach era in him? Then again, with all his championship experience \u2014 Olympic gold medal included \u2014 he\u2019s probably one of the better people to get guidance from\u2026 even if he fumbled parts of his own prime chasing a pay bump<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When it comes to actually fighting Cejudo, Talbott isn\u2019t all that worried about the usual \u201cTriple C\u201d fight-week cringe (like this<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re pretty familiar, so it would take a lot to really surprise me, I think, and I think he knows that,\u201d Talbott concluded. \u201cSo we\u2019ll see what happens because I\u2019m pretty chill, but yeah, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m also interested to see what happens during fight week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talbott enters the fight off a win over fellow up-and-comer Felipe Lima, while Cejudo is riding a three-fight skid \u2014 the longest of his storied career. And, of course, he claims he\u2019s retiring\u2026 again<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For more UFC 323: \u201cMerab vs. Yan 2\u201d news and notes be sure to hit up our comprehensive event archive right here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Bantamweight prospect Payton Talbott faces the toughest test of his career when he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,174978,1396,14855],"class_list":{"0":"post-324039","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc-323","15":"tag-ufc-news","16":"tag-videos"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}