{"id":67183,"date":"2025-08-14T08:32:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T08:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/67183\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T08:32:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T08:32:07","slug":"ufc-319-michael-venom-page-says-competing-in-ufc-is-biggest-weight-ive-ever-felt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/67183\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC 319: Michael ‘Venom’ Page says competing in UFC is ‘biggest weight I’ve ever felt’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The fight with 41-year-old Cannonier represents Page’s second successive bout at middleweight after he ended Magomedov’s<\/a> undefeated reign in February.<\/p>\n

After spending the majority of his 13-year career at welterweight, Page says he has chosen to move up because he was struggling to secure fights in the lower weight class.<\/p>\n

“Nobody at welterweight seems to like action – it’s a slow division,” said Page.<\/p>\n

“I think there’s a lot of people in the latter stage of their careers, so for them every fight means something a bit more.<\/p>\n

“They don’t want to take a risky fight, and I feel I represent a lot of risk because of the style I bring.”<\/p>\n

Page’s only title fight during his career was against American Logan Storley for the interim welterweight belt in 2022, where he suffered a split decision defeat.<\/p>\n

Page says competing in fights that “turn heads” is his main goal during the twilight of his career, but he has not given up on becoming a world champion.<\/p>\n

The middleweight belt will be on the line in the main event at Chicago’s United Centre as South African champion Dricus du Plessis faces Russia’s Khamzat Chimaev.<\/p>\n

“With someone so experienced and dangerous, I can’t look past Jared,” said Cannonier.<\/p>\n

“But my goal is to get a title fight in my last run. For me I feel like this is my last lap in MMA, and I want to retire from MMA before MMA retires me,” said Page. <\/p>\n

“I’m doing a lot of work in the background to set up the next stage of my life, so for now it’s about getting big fights and pushing towards the title.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fight with 41-year-old Cannonier represents Page’s second successive bout at middleweight after he ended Magomedov’s undefeated reign…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-67183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67183","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=67183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}