Michael Page has stopped arguing with the UFC about what weight he belongs at.
Page meets Nursulton Ruziboev at middleweight on Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 287 main card at the Accor Arena in Paris. It is the last fight on his UFC contract.
He told MMA Junkie that getting an opponent booked has been a grind.
It seems to be the common thing is like, we are sending forward suggestions, and we start at the top and one by one, it’s like, this person’s already fighting, this person’s injured, this person whatever. There just seems to be something. We just keep working our way down, sending in more names, more names. It got to the point where we’re like, who’s available?
Ruziboev came off that list.
And they sent forward a couple of names and he was one of the names. We’re like, cool, take the fight. Sometimes they make suggestions, and I feel like I myself wasn’t necessarily locked into, I was locked more into welterweight, but more of the opportunities were coming at middleweight, and that’s where our kind of miscommunication with the UFC was happening a lot. But now, I think we’re both clear that middleweight is where I want to be.
The reason is volume rather than rankings.
It’s less about a clearer path and more about being able to get more regular fights at middleweight, whereas welterweight seems very congested. It seems like many people are sitting on the sidelines waiting for opportunities instead of fighting to create opportunities, and I can’t be asked to be a part of that. So I said, yeah, let me go up to middleweight where I can enjoy what I do more.
Page is ranked eighth at 185lbs. Ruziboev is 37-9-2 with 34 of his wins by finish and arrives on a three-fight run capped by a first-round submission of Andrey Pulyaev at UFC Baku in June.
Page has heard the finisher pitch before. Sam Patterson had four straight stoppages going into their March meeting, and the fight turned into a slog.
And I go in there, they see this wacky style in front of them, they freeze, they become more defensive, they try to take the easy options during the fight and then survive the fight. And then I get punished for the fact that they survived the fight, but it’s hard to finish someone that’s not wanting to put themselves in any danger at all and just being completely defensive, but it is my job to then still figure out a way.
His fix is internal.
I feel like just enjoy it more. It sounds silly to say, but even when I’ve watched some of my old fights, I was really just in my element, just living my best life, enjoying, not worried about the results. And I feel like ever since I’ve come to the UFC, I’ve been worrying about getting the right result, getting it done in the right way and this and that.
Page is 4-1 in the UFC on a three-fight streak over Shara Magomedov, Jared Cannonier and Patterson. His only Octagon loss came against Ian Machado Garry in June 2024.
