who recently retired from the UFC<\/a>, scored dominant wins over Luke Rockhold and Dillon Danis in his two RAF matches thus far but neither of his opponents actually come from a wrestling background. It was after his win over Danis that Covington singled out Weidman as his ideal opponent and so the matchup was booked for RAF 9 on May 30.<\/p>\nBut with better wrestling accolades on his resume not to mention competing at a much bigger weight throughout his career, Weidman could only theorize that Covington must believe he\u2019s taking on a beaten and broken man because otherwise this could be a disastrous match for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he must think I\u2019m dead or my body has just taken such a beating, which he\u2019s right about that, 31 surgeries and stuff and I figure he\u2019s trying to take that true All-American status from me,\u201d Weidman told MMA Fighting. \u201cBut I\u2019m surprised, too. I\u2019m not Dillon Danis. I\u2019m not Luke Rockhold when it comes to wrestling. It\u2019s going to be a big step up for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cA part of me was super excited because I think I\u2019m going to crush him but then the other part of me is like I don\u2019t think he\u2019s stepping in there with me. I\u2019m training as if it\u2019s happening but I feel like there\u2019s going to be an excuse. Of course in this last RAF, Arman [Tsarukyan] wins and he calls out Colby and he\u2019s like \u2018Weidman can wait, let\u2019s do this and I\u2019ll beat Arman and then I\u2019ll wrestle Weidman.\u2019 I\u2019m like here he goes. Here he goes, he\u2019s running already.\u201d<\/p>\n
As of now, Covington is still booked against Weidman so it doesn\u2019t appear there\u2019s any concern about the matchup not actually happening.<\/p>\n
When it comes to Weidman getting ready for his return to wrestling, he admits his last competitive match took place all the way back in 2009 when he was just getting started with his fighting career.<\/p>\n
That said, the former UFC middleweight champion and 2026 UFC Hall of Famer doesn\u2019t feel like he\u2019s skipped a beat when it comes to his wrestling. Even Weidman was a little shocked that his wrestling skills haven\u2019t diminished much as he started getting ready for the showdown against Covington.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still kind of have it,\u201d Weidman said. \u201cI go down to the wrestling room and the first day of me getting back to wrestling since my bicep tendon surgery and even before that, I hadn\u2019t wrestled in forever, I was like I\u2019m going to start with the high school heavyweight kid. He\u2019s big and strong but he\u2019s a high school kid so can\u2019t get hurt, just work on my stuff, knock some rust off.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, it\u2019s a day where all the college kids were in town during spring break or whatever and they all want to wrestle me. They start asking me and they were smaller than me. They can\u2019t take me down. I was beating them up a little bit. So I still somehow have it. I don\u2019t even know how. It\u2019s actually fascinating to me that I somehow still can wrestle at a high level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prior to his RAF debut being booked for Saturday, Weidman had signed for a boxing match against old foe Anderson Silva but he tore his bicep muscle getting ready for the fight and was forced to drop out.<\/p>\n
While Weidman has likely closed the door on a potential return to MMA \u2014 unless the money is right \u2014 returning to wrestling was a perfect way to stay active as a competitor.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s anxious to get his first win over Covington at RAF 9 and then Weidman knows there are a long list of potential opponents, including a couple of top UFC middleweights, he could face on the mats.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always get asked \u2018how would you have done with Khamzat when you were in your prime?\u2019 So that would be a fun one,\u201d Weidman said. \u201cBo Nickal would be a fun one. Luke Rockhold, get some revenge on him. I\u2019d like to throw him around a little bit.<\/p>\n
\u201cPat Downey, I lost to him in that grappling match but it was kind of stupid. There was no points in the first 10 minutes and then there was a two-minute overtime and if nobody scores, it was a draw. I took him down twice in the 10 minute [round] or maybe it was seven minutes \u2026 when we got to that two-minute overtime, I\u2019m like I\u2019m not going to a draw. So I went for a belly-to-belly suplex I hit on him earlier and I landed on my own damn back and he beat me. I think I\u2019d beat him in wrestling, too. I\u2019ve got to beat up Colby first.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Weidman hasn\u2019t competed in a freestyle wrestling match in over 15 years but at his peak, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":691593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,214253,214254,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-691592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-raf-wrestling","tag-raf-wrestling-news","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691592","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=691592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/691593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}