Former UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman takes issue with how quickly MMA fans can turn on fighters.
Usman (20-4 MMA, 15-3 UFC) finds himself in unfamiliar territory, having lost three consecutive fights – two title bouts against Leon Edwards and one short-notice middleweight fight against Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 294.
Prior to his three-fight losing skid, Usman hadn’t lost in more than nine years and notched five title defenses. He compares his current state to former champions Israel Adesanya and Alexander Volkanovski, and how people have already forgotten their accolades.
“For a long, long time there, I was entertaining and entertaining, and entertaining was the thing for me,” Usman said on the “Weighing In” podcast with Josh Thomason and John McCarthy. “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. 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, 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 crouse we reap the benefits of that. We get the checks. It comes 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 kind of catches up to you. Now I’m just in a position to where I’m trying to heal all of that. Because, you know, you stack up all these injuries over time, and it starts to diminish your performances to where people start to forget just how good you are, just how much time you spent building your career, doing the things that made you successful, to where they start to (say), ‘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.'”
Despite his losing streak, Usman has new welterweight champion Belal Muhammad’s attention. The two have been trading barbs of late. Muhammad said he’s open to making his first title defense against either Usman or Shavkat Rakhmonov.
