Former welterweight champion Kamaru Usman has some thoughts on a UFC 296 fight week filled with controversies.
From Colby Covington’s distasteful comments toward Leon Edwards’ murdered father to Dricus Du Plessis bringing up Sean Strickland’s past child abuse, emotions flew high last week in Las Vegas. UFC CEO Dana White admitted Covington’s comments were too much, but Usman said it’s hard for White to contain the trash talk even though he’s not a fan of it.
“I don’t think that’s Dana’s job,” Usman said on the PBD Podcast. “Dana is a promoter, and so his job is to promote the fights. He has a whole company that he’s looking out for. This is fight sports. It’s very difficult to tell two grown men, ‘Hey, don’t say that about this.’ This is not scripted. As the motto is, it’s as real as it gets. Me being the man that I am and growing up the way that I grew up, I understand that there’s a limit to certain things. There’s certain boundaries and certain lines that we just don’t cross. I think that goes into just upbringing and the respect factor of just growing up in life.
“We understand that there are certain things that you just don’t do. As I believe in war, wars wage with men. Men wage wars. It’s very difficult to start attacking women and children. That just has never been a thing that men do. When they say sign up for war, it’s men that sign up. We sign up, and we go defend. And so the same thing with what we’re doing because in a way we’re waging war with one another. When we do these things, that’s what men do. We leave those out because it’s between us. We have to step in there, and we have to take care of whatever we say we’re going to do.”
With the rise of MMA and the ever-growing platforms, Usman thinks fighters are eager to capitalize on the opportunities of having some shine on them.
“Nowadays, we’re in these weird times in society to where everybody wants to be seen, everybody wants to be heard,” Usman said. “It’s information overload. We have these mics, we have these phones, we have these things that just – we all want to just be out there. People just – they’re willing to say or do anything, whether it’s men, whether it’s women willing to do and say anything just to be seen. These guys are just kind of being lost in that, to where they just – ‘I’m not going to be seen if I don’t say this or cross that line or do this.'”
Usman’s reign as champion had him in conversations among the greatest welterweights of all time. But unlike brash trash-talking superstars such as Conor McGregor, “The Nigerian Nightmare” tried to mostly let his fighting do the talking. He thinks McGregor’s rise influenced a lot of fighters’ perception of success.
“For me, I’ve never been that kind of guy,” Usman said. “I guess that’s kind of been a knock on me. Some people didn’t like the fact that when I’m dominating everyone, I’m not belittling them. I’m not saying this or saying that.
“There wasn’t a line that McGregor wasn’t willing to cross. We saw where that got him. McGregor’s probably one of the most famous mixed martial arts fighters ever, no doubt. With that, you have all these young kids now looking at that and going, ‘Oh yeah, I can just say and do whatever I want to do that’s going to make me famous.'”
