February 10, (THEWILL) – Kamaru Usman’s manager, Ali Abdelaziz, recently said that the welterweight champion may still meet fellow Nigerian and middleweight top dog Israel Adesanya in a superfight, but the fighter himself seemed to be against the notion.
Making himself abundantly clear, Usman said of the subject: “I’ve said it before, as long as Israel Adesanya is the champion, I have no interest in going there. But when Jan Blachowicz was the champion at light heavyweight, of course, I thought it was a great matchup.
“I’m not saying I would just demolish the whole light heavyweight division. I’m saying I thought that was a great matchup, and I thought that I would have been a two-time champion, skipping middleweight and becoming the light heavyweight champion.”
Usman did say, though, that if Dana White offered them a huge sum of money to fight, he would have to think about it.
“I’ve said it before, Adesanya’s a fellow Nigerian. A good guy. I like him, I like his approach. I’ve said it — I’d rather two Nigerians have belts than one Nigerian with two belts.
“If Dana [White] is willing to sit us down and say, $100 million, ‘Hey guys, let’s split this up,’ at that point Israel and I would have to talk. Because at that point, my little brother, my blood brother, we would have to talk and say, ‘Hey, let’s go out here and make this money.”
Usman, on the other hand, is eager to fight emerging star Khamzat Chimaev, but only after the upstarts proceed to defeat other top competitors, which could then pave the way for Chimaev to have a title shot against him.
“There’s a reason there’s a structure to get here. So he’s done great with the opposition that he’s been presented with, and by the time he gets here, once he gets here, of course we’ll have that conversation. But I am the champion. I am the pound-for-pound best in the world. I am the king of the castle. Everybody wants a piece of me. So that’s good. I like that.
“There was a time when I was coming up and I just couldn’t get those fights, I couldn’t get the next guy to step in there with me. But now that I’m at the top, I don’t have to do that. These guys have to call me out and these guys have to come to me. When they make it up here, I’ll be here waiting,” Usman finished with authority.
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
