Former welterweight champion Kamaru Usman has responded to a series of unfavorable comments directed at him by Conor McGregor. The Irishman recently called out Usman, who he referred to as a “bum,” adding, “I can’t even remember where you’re at in your game, bro, yeah? You’re nothing to me.”
This sort of behavior is not unsurprising from McGregor, but this time, Usman took to his Pound 4 Pound podcast to set the record straight: “Listen, at the end of the day, Conor is who Conor is. Conor has done some pretty fantastic things in this sport of mixed martial arts for the UFC. He has. But Conor, so have I. You were a champion – so was I. So at the end of the day, where I have a little issue, you come around saying, ‘He’s a bum,’ or he’s this. You can’t say that, Conor.
“I didn’t kick him while he was down. He’s had run-ins with the law. He’s had back-to-back incidents and situations, but you never heard me sit there and kick the man while he was down. There needs to be some level of respect here because, at the end of the day, that’s what this sport is all about.”
The Nigerian Nightmare also revealed that he offered McGregor an opportunity to fight him – twice – when he was still the welterweight champion, and McGregor declined both times: “If you wanted the opportunity to fight me, I gave Conor two opportunities to fight me. Two opportunities, while I was champion. I gave him two opportunities to fight me. I told him, ‘Hey, if you want a crack at that third belt, who better?’ I was on the run that I was on, who better that he could come up and fight. He talked about it, and he bounced back and forth. When he wanted to make his return, he said, ‘Yeah, maybe I’ll go up and grab the third belt.’ It is what it is, Conor. If you wanted to fight, you had your opportunity – but you didn’t. To call me a bum is kind of disrespectful.”
A former champion in two divisions, McGregor has been one of the best fighters in the UFC division with a solid track record to back things up, but this has not kept him from squabbling with other fighters off the ring, which is part of what makes him a rather controversial figure. But all of this may be part of his tactic to sell his forthcoming fight, his first in three years, against Michael Chandler, happening on June 29.
Still, a Usman vs. McGregor fixture is something so many UFC fans would have loved to see, but who’s to say it would not happen again?
