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ATLANTA – Does Kamaru Usman still have UFC title aspirations? If you answered yes, take that and double it.
UFC on ESPN 69 takes place Saturday at State Farm Arena and marks the first competition for Usman (20-4 MMA, 15-3 UFC) in nearly two years as he battles Joaquin Buckley (21-6 MMA, 11-4 UFC) in the main event. Although he’s on a three-fight skid at 38 years old, Usman hasn’t been deterred from the goal he’s had his entire career: to be the best.
“My path there is pretty simple,” Usman told MMA Junkie and other reporters at a pre-fight news conference Wednesday. “I’ll just lay out the map here. It’s finish Buckley this weekend and then wait for the winner of, I believe, Islam (Makhachev) and JDM (Jack Della Maddalena), which is going to be an incredible fight. It’s such a great thing now having Islam come up into the division. Who wouldn’t buy a ticket to that? Former pound-for-pound and current pound-for-pound (fighting). I love Islam. Islam is a great fighter. I think that’s something that we’d both remember forever.”
But the aspirations don’t stop there. Usman not only wants to return to the place he once was, holding gold atop the UFC welterweight division, no. He wants to take it further. Middleweight gold is also on his mind.
“(I’d) win that and go ahead and probably vacate, go up,” Usman said. “Myself (vs.) Dricus Du Plessis, if he is the champion, or Khamzat Chimaev, too, if Dricus is no longer the champion, we do that. If Dricus is the champion, we do that in the first card in Africa. That’s another blockbuster. These are back-to-back blockbuster fights you tell your grandkids about. Who wouldn’t watch those? After that, now you’re sitting with two belts. It’s like, ‘What do we do next?’ That’s, I’d say, the long-term goal in the back of my mind.”
Usman is widely considered one of the best welterweights in MMA history. He defended the title five times during his reign that stretched from March 2019 to August 2022 when Leon Edwards’ head kick brought it to an abrupt end. Usman then lost a trilogy bout vs. Edwards by unanimous decision. His most recent competition came in October 2023 when he lost a close middleweight fight to Chimaev.
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