“I’ve just been ready to fight since February — well, I asked for a fight since then,” Usman said on his Pound 4 Pound podcast. “And it was like, ‘Ah, we don’t know.’ We all know which fight that I wanted. I wanted that fight. And so I think there was just a lot of back and forth stuff being done, and now we kind of hear all the stories of potentially they were trying to make Ilia versus Islam and all of these things, and I wanted the Islam fight. So all of these things behind the scenes kind of dragged on. And then DDP was mentioned, not really offered, but mentioned, and I said, yeah, if that’s … I just need something that gets me to the title. I just want that. You’re not gonna give me the title, then give me something that gets me to the title. And so this wasn’t really offered. He was mentioned.”
“I said, Okay, let’s [fight Du Plessis] soon at [UFC 327 in] Miami, I even asked that,” Usman continued. “And then he was like, ‘Yeah, Miami’s too soon, he might not be ready.’ And so, it is what it is. So I thought the fight was off, it wasn’t gonna happen, and then there was, like, oh, then it’s potentially gonna happen. Obviously, there’s some logistics you have to work through when you’re at this level and that’s what it was. And then finally, I guess it was announced. I’m like, ‘Well, shit, I guess it’s happening, let me go ahead and prepare.’ There’s still a club that I’m not in yet and I want to be in that [champ champ] club. So it’s something that I’m still chasing and something that’s still very attractive to me in the sport. So, I’m gonna pursue that. Whoever the opponent is, it doesn’t really matter to me at this point, because it’s bigger than just a fight.”
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