Kamaru Usman will be defending his UFC welterweight championship this weekend at UFC 245 against Colby Covington, but there was once a chance Usman considered exiting the UFC long before he became a champion.
Kamaru Usman has gone undefeated in the UFC with 10 victories, no defeats. That didn’t stop him from exiting the UFC due to a lack of additional victims (Via BJPenn.com):
“There were moments in the UFC where I thought about quitting fighting because there were moments where I couldn’t get a fight,” Usman said to Aaron Bronsteter on the TSN MMA Show. “I was very close. I went six or seven months of just sitting there trying to get somebody to fight. The organization said ‘that guy turned it down, and that guy turned it down.’ And I just said ‘You know what? There’s no point.’”
What particularly frustrated Usman was the fact that the UFC was not doing enough to ensure he was paired up with a worthy opponent.
“Everyone made up a different excuse. ‘He needs to beat someone in the top 10 first. He’s not a good fighter or he’s boring.’ No one wanted to let me in the party,” Usman continued. “The organization was not necessarily taking the steps and the efforts to get these guys to fight me. They knew what would happen, that I would be the welterweight champion of the world. Which is what I am right now.”
And one notable name on the list of fighters who refused to fight him, according to Usman, is the man he will be fighting this weekend, former UFC interim welterweight champion Colby Covington.
“Part of [the frustration] was my opponent that I’m fighting. He was offered to me several times. Four times to be exact, and he’s turned them all down,” Kamaru Usman concluded.
What are your thoughts on Kamaru Usman’s revelation that he nearly quit the UFC due to an inability to find opponents?
