Kamaru Usman says his next fight has to be for a UFC title next should he pull off a massive upset this Saturday.<\/p>\n
The former welterweight champ faces recent middleweight champ Dricus du Plessis in the 185-pound main event of UFC Oklahoma City, which takes place at the Paycom Center and streams on Paramount+.<\/p>\n
When asked what would be next with a win this weekend, Usman says it\u2019s a no-brainer.<\/p>\n
\u201cSean Strickland,\u201d Usman said at media day. I mean, that makes sense. That\u2019s pretty easy. It\u2019s either Sean Strickland or Islam [Makhachev], if Islam is still the champion, which I assume he will be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Usman picked up his first win in nearly four years 13 months ago with a lopsided decision victory over Joaquin Buckley in the main event of UFC Atlanta. Following the victory, Usman called for a shot at Makhachev and the welterweight title. However, the UFC didn\u2019t grant him that opportunity to regain the belt with so many contenders ahead of him in the queue.<\/p>\n
Now he jumps back up to middleweight, where he faced Khamzat Chimaev on short notice at UFC 294 in October 2023, dropping a close majority decision. Du Plessis returns for the first time since losing the middleweight title to Chimaev at UFC 319 this past August.<\/p>\n
Usman was asked if the path to a title is easier at middleweight than welterweight right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say easier,\u201d Usman said. \u201cI think it just fit. It just made sense. I obviously wanted the Islam fight. We talked about that and I thought that was what was going to be next, but unfortunately, in these things like this, the company kind of has a say \u2013 a big say \u2013 in this and they felt this was an opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, I\u2019ve been up here before and fought the former champion, and so this one just made sense at this time, but it\u2019s definitely not easy. I wouldn\u2019t say easier, with respect to some of these guys right now at the top. I mean, guys like Jared Cannonier, guys like Nassourdine Imavov, Caio Borralho, all these guys, Robocop. All of these guys are extremely tough, just like Prates and Morales, and all these guys [at 170]. Hey, it is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kamaru Usman says his next fight has to be for a UFC title next should he pull off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[829,99,6493,10080,6879],"class_list":["post-767518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-latest-news","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}