In a recent interview, welterweight champion and consensus P4P king Kamaru Usman said he considered the possibility of moving up to make an attempt at double champ status. Given the weight that carries and the fact that he's attempting to catch Georges St. Pierre as the greatest of all time, that makes a lot of sense. It does contradict what Usman has said before though when he said he has no interest in moving up because the champion above him, Israel Adesanya, is one of Usman's good friends and he has no interest in fighting him. The interview keeps going and then Usman says when he thought about moving up, it wasn't for Adesanya, but rather to skip middleweight and go all the way to light heavyweight and challenge then champion Jan Blachowicz. This made it's rounds pretty quickly and I think a lot of people sort of missed the point and that's why I wanted to give my point of view on the matter.
There's two separate, slightly different questions, that I think are being lumped together here and making the distinction between them is important. The first is "was Kamaru Usman serious when he said this?" and the second is "Should Kamaru Usman consider actually doing it?" The first question deals with the sincerity of the statement, while the second involves evaluation of his actual chances for success, which isn't the same thing. I think some people who are saying that Usman would have no shot are using that as a way to conclude that he's just making things up and while maybe that's true, it doesn't necessarily have to be. He can have no shot to win and still have it be true that it was something that came up and that he thought about. People acting like this is the biggest deal on social media is sort of making this more than it needed to be, but with no UFC event this weekend, maybe everyone is just looking for something to latch on to.
The first part I'm going to evaluate is the sincerity of his statement. This is actually the more difficult of the two parts to talk about because it is based only on theoretical speculation. There's no way to actually know what happened, but I'll take my shot at figuring it out. The only reason anyone even cares about this in the first place is because we view Kamaru Usman as a trustworthy source. If this had been someone who is known for outlandish comments, I don't think this would be getting as much attention. If Conor McGregor said he was going up to middleweight, if Colby Covington said he was moving up to light heavyweight or if Henry Cejudo said he was going to lightweight, I don't think people care nearly as much. Conor gets the attention, but for slightly different reasons of course. I think everyone kind of took this and ran with it because Kamaru Usman doesn't normally speak nonsense. He doesn't talk just to hear himself talk and say whatever is necessary to keep himself in the news cycle. I don't think Kamaru Usman is all of the sudden someone who's just going to start saying anything and everything, so there has to be some level of sincerity in this right? I think so, but it's really being stretched. Someone doesn't get to his position and accomplish what he has without having a high level of confidence and belief in themselves. When Kamaru Usman says that he thinks he could have moved up and beaten Blachowicz, I believe him. To be clear, I believe that he thinks that. Whether I believe that he can do it is what we'll get into a little later, but I 100% believe that he thinks that in his own mind. I think this conversation may have just happened in passing somewhere. Usman was with his friends and they were joking around about his career and him moving up and since he has no interest in the Adesanya fight, someone in jest said "Hey, you should go up to the next division then" and everyone had a good laugh about it. Usman then probably says something like "I think I can beat him" and then they all get into a debate as friends. Obviously, I'm not an insider here and don't know any of this, but this idea had to come from somewhere. I doubt that's something Usman just came up with on the spot when he got asked the question. Do I believe Usman gave serious consideration to this? Not really. There's weight classes for a reason and to bump up 35 lbs would be an unheard of climb. Maybe he's more serious than even I think, but I really doubt it. I think he said it, mostly to get the exact reaction that it got. It makes its rounds on social media and everyone talks about it for a day and it gets his name back out there after we haven't heard much from him since the Colby fight. From that point of view, this was a very successful interview and statement from Usman. I assume someone will ask Dana about it at some point and this story will get rehashed again probably for the media he does in regards the card this coming Saturday.
The more interesting side of the conversation is to consider the idea of what Usman would actually look like at 205. Now, I don't think he's ever going to do it and I don't think he should either, but I think it could be a fun exercise to consider and MMA is supposed to be fun. From a pure size standpoint, Usman would be at a tremendous disadvantage. The UFC's stats page lists him at 6 feet tall and having a 76 inch reach, which is exactly the same reach as Glover Teixeira, despite Glover being 2 inches taller. Blachowicz is also 6'2, but comes in with a 78 inch reach. Challenger Jiri Prochazka is much bigger at 6'3 with an 80 inch reach. While his arm reach isn't too much of a disadvantage, the height difference is indicative of a leg reach disadvantage, which leaves him susceptible to kicks. The problem would really be the weight and strength of the much larger fighters. Let's for a second use the fight weight for Deiveson Figueiredo just to do some approximating. Thanks to the California state athletic commission, we know that Figueiredo weighed in Friday at 124 lbs and then weighed 143 lbs on Saturday before the fight. This comes out to be about 15% of his total weight being added in water before the fight. Let's assume for the sake of argument that this percentage holds for all weight classes. This means that when Usman cuts to 170, he would be able to add 15% of that back after rehydration, which comes out to 25.5 lbs, making him 195.5 lbs. There's usually some buffer between how much some can add back after rehydrating and what they weighed coming into the week, so let's say he's somewhere around 200 lbs at the beginning of fight week. He likely loses some weight just due to the hard training camp and all of the cardio work he does, so we can give him the benefit of the doubt and estimate that he walks around outside of a training camp somewhere in the realm of 210 and definitely no more than 220 at the absolute maximum. All of this to say, that as long as Usman trained a hard camp, he would be able to come in on weight without too much attention paid to his diet and no weight cut. This would leave him somewhere around 200 lbs on fight night, which is right where Israel Adesanya was when he fought Jan Blachowicz. If that same 15% applies to the light heavyweights, that means they're walking into the cage at around 235 lbs. Now, I don't think that 15% applies to every fighter by any means, but this is all speculation in the first place so, just go with it. I think this is just way too much to overcome. Not only is 35 lbs, 2 inches of reach, and 2 inches of height a lot to give up, this is a situation that Usman has never found himself in before. Usman is typically the bigger, stronger, and more powerful fighter. He's been that in basically every fight he's been in since joining the UFC. All of the sudden he would find himself in a situation where he's none of those things and he would have to find a way to win that he's never really had to deal with before. We saw Israel Adesanya move up and still have the height and reach advantage and he still struggled with the size and strength difference. Now, this isn't to say that I think Usman would get dominated because I have too much respect for him to act like he would just be absolutely outclassed, but at the same time, I don't really think he would be able to become the light heavyweight champion and it's not really something I want to see him try at this juncture. If he were to become the champion at 185 lbs, then maybe later in his career I would be much more open to that idea. However, I have virtually no interest in seeing him make an immediate jump and little confidence that he would do so successfully.
What do you guys think? This was all likely just a PR move right? How do you think he would actually perform though? Would he be able to win a round? Is there anyone that you think could move up 2 weight classes? Maybe Henry Cejudo at featherweight? Leave any and all thoughts below. Thanks for reading and have a good one.
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