{"id":28129,"date":"2025-07-28T00:36:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T00:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/28129\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T00:36:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T00:36:08","slug":"stephen-thompson-responds-to-muslim-salikhovs-old-guys-callout-at-ufc-on-abc-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/28129\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Thompson responds to Muslim Salikhov’s ‘old guys’ callout at UFC on ABC 9"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Thompson is down for a matchup of the oldest active fighters in the welterweight division after being called out at UFC on ABC 9<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Following a 42-second upset knockout<\/a> of Carlos Leal on Saturday’s card in Abu Dhabi, Muslim Salikhov called for a showdown against Thompson (17-9-1 MMA, 12-9-1 UFC) in what would be a pairing of two of the division’s most decorated strikers.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

It didn’t take long for the 42-year-old “Wonderboy” to respond to the callout from 41-year-old Salikhov (22-5 MMA, 9-4 UFC), and he seemingly obliged immediately (via X<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Thompson is coming off a controversial split decision loss<\/a> to Gabriel Bonfim at UFC on ESPN 70 this month in what was the second-to-last fight on his current UFC contract.<\/p>\n

Although Thompson admitted in a pre-fight interview with MMA Junkie<\/a> that he’s unsure if he’ll be signed to a new deal, a clash with a fighter of similar age and style would be fitting matchmaking.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: UFC Abu Dhabi: Stephen Thompson responds to Muslim Salikhov’s callout<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen Thompson is down for a matchup of the oldest active fighters in the welterweight division after being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,18237,641,18455,638,21258,82,18456,640],"class_list":["post-28129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-carlos-leal","tag-fighting","tag-gabriel-bonfim","tag-mma","tag-muslim-salikhov","tag-sports","tag-stephen-thompson","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}