Returning Usman Plans To Smash Shavkat, Bounce Belal

Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images

Kamaru Usman was probably out of the welterweight title picture for as long as Leon Edwards was champion, thanks to consecutive losses to “Rocky” at UFC 278 and UFC 286. But now that Belal Muhammad has upset the 170-pound apple cart, “The Nigerian Nightmare” is back in the running.

And wiping out a top contender like Shavkat Rakhmonov or Jack Della Maddalena would likely elevate Usman to the No. 1 slot.

“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 on his Pound-4-Pound podcast (transcribed by MMA Junkie). “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.”

He fixed them enough to win their championship rematch.

“Because of that [Edwards] loss, the UFC now as a company you’re going to go, ‘Okay, 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.”

Or it could be neither, since Usman is coming off a loss to Khamzat Chimaev, his third straight.

During the UFC 304 post-fight press conference (watch it here), UFC CEO Dana White told the combat sports media that Edwards was not in a position to secure an immediate rematch. That means matchmakers already have other plans when it comes to Muhammad’s first title defense, likely to come at the end of 2024 or early 2025.

Expect the welterweight division to look dramatically different in just a few months.