Kamaru Usman thinks he could walk into a title shot right now against UFC champ Belal Muhammad and retake the belt.
However, as an experienced name in the came, Usman (20-4 MMA, 15-3 UFC) understands he’s unlikely to get a title shot after three consecutive losses, especially when two came against Leon Edwards, who just lost the welterweight belt handily to Muhammad (24-3 MMA, 15-3 UFC) in Saturday’s UFC 304 headliner in Manchester, England.
Usman presented his situation on the latest episode of his “Pound-4-Pound Podcast” with co-host Henry Cejudo, and said his more probable scenario will be fighting a top-ranked contender like Shavkat Rakhmonov or Jack Della Maddalena to prove worthy of a crack at Muhammad.
“You want (the perspective of) ‘The Nigerian Nightmare’ Kamaru Usman? Give me ample time to get in there. End of the year, top of the next year I’ll go in there and take my welterweight strap back – 100 percent,” Usman said. “But, if you’re talking to the man that’s from the outside looking in trying to satisfy everybody looking at the landscape of everything. Yes it’s, ‘Ah, he lost to Leon Edwards.’ But people have amnesia very quickly. People forget that I was winning almost 24 minutes of that fight until lightning struck and Leon landed that kick. And I think when you land something like it almost spoiled Leon to where he forgot that, ‘Hey, I was being dominated this exact same way.’ Now you feel, ‘I’m the champion, I can just do whatever I want.’ No. You have to actually go out there and fix those mistakes, which clearly he didn’t fix.
“But because of that loss, the UFC now as a company you’re going to go, ‘OK, I want to get Usman a fight to really show the fans that he’s back and to us that he’s back and deserves a chance to potentially go out there and get that title back. In order to do that, get him someone on the top. That could be Shavkat Rakhmonov, or it could be JDM.”
Usman hasn’t competed since October when he suffered a majority decision loss to Khamzat Chimaev in a middleweight bout at UFC 294. He appears intent to return to welterweight for his next fight, where he is No. 3 in the latest USA TODAY Sports/MMA Junkie rankings.
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 304.
