London, England — At UFC London this past Saturday, Scotland’s own Paul Craig made his UFC middleweight debut after dropping down from the light heavyweight division.
“Bearjew” made it clear that the reason for moving down to middleweight was because he felt undersized against his fellow light heavyweights, especially in his last outing against Johnny Walker.
For his first fight at 185lbs, Craig was matched with someone with a very similar grappling style to his own, Andre Muniz. Because of this, it was unclear how the fight would go. Throughout fight week, Craig made it clear that he thought because of them both being submission specialists, the fight would end up being a striking match.
Craig displayed a complete performance, picking up only his fourth win by TKO. Someone who was in attendance for the fight was Khamzat Chimaev. The star has recently had his middleweight move confirmed, booking a fight with Paulo Costa.
After his win, Craig explained how he thinks a fight between himself and Chimaev would go, whilst also making a mention of all other 185lbers. “Everybody in the middleweight division has an opportunity to fight me. Who knows where we’ll be put in the division, maybe we’re back in the top 15 and number nine in the light heavyweights, maybe in the top 15 in middleweights, we’ll find out Monday.
“But anybody in front of me, that’s who I’m looking to take on and if it is Khamzat and he takes me down, there’s a good chance that he’s going to get triangled,” Craig said.
Depending on where Craig finds himself ranked come Monday morning, a match-up with Chimaev could be not too far down the line. Having said that, the Scottish fighter wants to fight at both middleweight and light heavyweight which makes proceedings fairly awkward in terms of rankings.
Watch the full UFC London post fight press conference with Paul Craig above.
