“You don’t lose, you learn,” the Nigerian said in a video posted on his Youtube channel. “I definitely learned a lot in this fight, and I learned a lot about myself. And I’m going to use that in the future. But we went out there and did everything that was possible to do on ten days notice in Abu Dhabi.”
“Now we’re moving forward. I’m not sure about the plans yet – everything is in a fog. I don’t rule out that I can stay at middleweight. Yes, of course size matters, especially in the beginning, but I’m a championship-level fighter, so now we want to do a five-round fight instead of three rounds. I’m not sure yet, but middleweight looks attractive to me, so anything could be. I’ll still make a statement on that.”
Three days earlier, a desire to fight “The Nigerian Nightmare” was announced by former UFC middleweight champion, Robert Whittaker. A bout between Whittaker and Usman could very well qualify for the five-round main event of the UFC Fight Night or UFC on ESPN tournament series.
On October 21 at UFC 294 in Abu Dhabi, Kamaru Usman lost to Hamzat Chimaev by majority judges’ decision, taking the challenger fight with “Borz” on short notice. That said, the Nigerian himself opted out of the five-round format as he was unsure of his physicality.