Kamaru Usman doesn’t understand why MMA fans act the way that they do sometimes.
The former UFC welterweight champion is on the path to returning to the octagon for the first time since losing a short-notice competitive decision to Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 294 this past October. Usman and new 170-pound champion Belal Muhammad have been going back-and-forth on social media since UFC 304 in July.
Usman has dropped three straight fights, but was on quite the run before that, as he compares himself to two other longtime, dominant former champions.
“I didn’t care what I was going through, I didn’t care what I was dealing with, I didn’t care what I was battling physically, mentally, emotionally,” Usman said on Weighing In. “It didn’t matter to me. I was going to jump in there and perform, and perform, and perform — and the same thing with Israel Adesanya, which is why you saw a ton of those title defenses, and I’m sure [it’s the same with] Alexander Volkanovski, who also came out and expressed that sometimes.
“We do these things to jump in and go, and go, and go to try to entertain the masses, and of course, we reap the benefits that come with that, we get the checks [that] come with that. Now, I’m in a place where, OK, with all of that comes a lot of injuries. All the things that you’ve been dealing with, it catches up to you. ... Because you stack up all of these injuries over time, it starts to diminish your performances to where people start to forget how good that you are, just how much time you spent building your career, doing the things that made you successful to where they start to [say things like], ‘Oh, he’s washed,’ which is... how disrespectful are MMA fans? How disrespectful are they?
“‘Oh, he’s washed, oh, he can’t do this anymore, he’s not that.’ They were saying that before Jon Jones came back and then fought Ciryl Gane.”
Prior to the loss to Chimaev, Usman lost two straight championship fights to Leon Edwards — including a stunning head kick knockout in the final round of UFC 278 in August 2022 that caused Usman to lose the title.
Despite all of the success Usman has found in the sport over the years, a different amount of pressure comes with it — including pleasing the fans. The former champion actually envies a lot of the younger fighters who are just scratching the surface.
“I just tell them, ‘This is the fun time right now,’” Usman said. “All you get to do is come in [the gym], you have so much time to just learn. ... Yes, I know everyone sees the glitz and glamour and the lights and go, ‘Oh, man. That’s what I want. I want the outfits, I want the nice shirts,’ and all of these different things. Yes, that’s great.
“But guess what? Once you become champion and you get there, now you fly to New York for a two-day press conference — a day flight to get there, then I’m there for two days, then I have to fly back. That’s three to four days that I just lost where the rest of the guys are just training, going to the gym, training every day. ... It catches up to you, and that time is not that fun anymore because, hey, now you got bills-bills, now you got problems-problems.”
