Kamaru Usman admits it “stings” he didn’t become a champ-champ in his UFC career

Former UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman says it stings that he never became a champ-champ in his UFC career.

Usman was a dominant champion at welterweight as he defended his title five times. However, he made it clear he wouldn’t go up to middleweight to chase champ-champ status due to his friend Israel Adesanya being the 185lbs champion. With that, it ruled out any chance of Usman holding two titles at the same time as many of the greats have done.

Although, Kamaru Usman says he is glad he never fought Israel Adesanya, he does admit that if Izzy wasn’t the champ, he would have definitely gone up to 185lbs and tried for champ-champ status.

https://twitter.com/ChampRDS/status/1763252601020129288

“It stings that I didn’t become double-champion. But, it doesn’t sting that I didn’t go up and fight Israel. I just genuinely, and I stand by that, I just genuinely had no desire to be the reason why, or the potential reason why Israel, another Nigerian, was not a UFC champion. I had no interest in that. Not just saying I was gonna beat him up or whatever, but I just had no interest in being the reason why he potentially was not another Nigerian UFC champion. But, had it been Sean Strickland, 1000 percent I was moving up,” Kamaru Usman said on his Pound-4-Pound podcast.

Kamaru Usman made it clear several times that he wouldn’t fight Israel Adesanya, but had he still been the welterweight champion while Sean Strickland was the champ, he would have gone up and challenged ‘Tarzan’ in a heartbeat. Usman had already beaten Strickland at 170lbs, so he had full confidence he would be able to do the same thing at 185lbs and become a champ-champ. However, unfortunately for Usman, that didn’t happen and he will have to go down as just a dominant UFC welterweight champion rather than a champ-champ.

Usman is currently 20-4 and on a three-fight losing skid and coming off a majority decision loss to Khamzat Chimaev in October in his middleweight debut. Before that, he dropped a majority decision to Leon Edwards after being knocked out by the Brit to lose his welterweight title.