Former welterweight champion Kamaru Usman is not a fan of trash talking in the UFC as he revealed when reacting to controversial statements made by fighters at UFC 296.
Colby Covington’s made comments toward Leon Edwards’ murdered father ahead of their bout and South African fighter, Dricus Du Plessis, brought up Sean Strickland’s past child abuse in Las Vegas.
UFC CEO Dana White admitted Covington’s comments were too much, but Usman said it’s hard for White to contain the trash talk even though he’s not a fan of it.
“I don’t think that’s Dana’s job. Dana is a promoter, and so his job is to promote the fights. He has a whole company that he’s looking out for,” The Nigerian-born fighter said on the PBD Podcast,
“This is fight sports. It’s very difficult to tell two grown men, ‘Hey, don’t say that about this.’ This is not scripted. As the motto is, it’s as real as it gets.”
However, Usman emphasised the importance of certain limits that there are lines that fighters should not cross saying, “Me being the man that I am and growing up the way that I grew up, I understand that there’s a limit to certain things.
“There’s certain boundaries and certain lines that we just don’t cross. I think that goes into just upbringing and the respect factor of just growing up in life.”
Usman’s reign as champion had him in conversations among the greatest welterweights of all time. But unlike trash-talking superstars such as Conor McGregor, ‘The Nigerian Nightmare’ tried to mostly let his fighting do the talking. He thinks McGregor’s rise influenced a lot of fighters’ perceptions of success.
“Nowadays, we’re in these weird times in society to where everybody wants to be seen, everybody wants to be heard. It’s information overload. We have these mics, we have these phones, we have these things that just – we all want to just be out there.
“For me, I’ve never been that kind of guy, I guess that’s kind of been a knock on me. Some people didn’t like the fact that when I’m dominating everyone, I’m not belittling them. I’m not saying this or saying that,” he said.
