“Never gonna happen, but”- Chael Sonnen not buying the idea of Kamaru Usman in light heavy weight title fight
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Kamaru Usman- Chael Sonnen
If UFC Welterweight Champion and pound for pound #1 Kamaru Usman defeats another title contender in Leon Edwards in his next fight, there won’t be much left for him to interest him in the Welterweight division. He therefore would pursue a lot of things outside of his duty as a title defender, which would include having a boxing match against boxing’s pound for pound #1 Canelo Alvarez, which most unlikely thing to happen but it excites Usman regardless.
Other than that, Usman definitely would love to go fight for another belt within the UFC and maybe become the champ-champ simultaneously, something that only 3 fighters have achieved. Because of his origins in Nigeria, Usman cannot fight another Nigerian in UFC Middleweight champion Israel Adesanya, therefore he recently mentioned his one-time thought pondering on fighting for the light heavyweight championship when Jan Blachowicz was the champion.
Chael Sonnen recalls Kamaru Usman fighting at 185-lbs back in the latter’s wrestling days
MMA Legend Chael Sonnen came on his Youtube Channel to react to Usman’s aspiration to fight for a 205-lbs light-heavyweight title. Sonnen also talks about Usman’s interesting and sorta inspiring journey to have a championship mindset and become the UFC champion that he is today.
“I would like to bring something to you guys, this is never gonna happen,“ says Sonnen on Usman’s light heavyweight title aspirations “I got that, but we aren’t going to see Usman versus Georges St-Pierre either and we discuss it all the time we’re not going to see Khabib versus Usman or Georges St-Pierre but we discuss it all the time. So let’s have a little bit of fun here…
There’s a couple of things I don’t think you know about Kamaru Usman,” continued Sonnen “Kamaru Usman is not a 70-pounder just so you understand, he fights at 170. Kamaru Usman had dreams of being an Olympic wrestling champion and he lived that life he went to the hardest competition went to the most difficult and tried training camps, he was living that life… I tell you his amateur wrestling story because I don’t think you guys know this, he did that at 185 pounds.“
In summary, Sonnen praises Usman for all the grind he did in his amateur wrestling days that produced a championship mindset fighter. Sonnen then described what led Usman to become a 170-pounder for his MMA career. Sonnen further suggests that fighters should follow Usman’s career rigorously for success.
So even if it’s very clear that Usman is not going to fight the sitting light-heavyweight champion no matter who it is, we actually got to know a lot about his path actually coming from a higher weight class, and that too at a stage when humans are supposed to get bigger thereby inevitably increasing a lot on weight as well. Indeed Usman has made some rare sacrifices along with the regular ones as well.
What do you make of Sonnen’s assessment of Usman’s journey from his amateur wrestling to professional MMA days in terms of Usman’s experience with his weight? Do you see Usman having a chance of fighting in the 205-lbs division now? In any way, who do you think is ideally the next opponent for Usman?
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Abhai Singh Tanwar
(1386 Articles Published)