At 37-years old, and 1-1 through two fights in his UFC career, former Bellator MMA title challenger Michael “Venom” Page has a rapidly closing window at the top of the sport – but he still has big plans in the welterweight division.
That, despite a detour to 185lbs this Saturday, where he takes on Shara Magomedov at UFC Saudi Arabia.
“I could perform exceptionally, I’ve just got things I want to get done at welterweight,” Page (22-3) explained during Wednesday’s UFC Saudi Arabia media day, asked whether he might stick around the middleweight division. “That’s more just a personal thing. Maybe I come back, maybe there’s another exciting fight for me to have [at 185], so maybe I bounce around, but the goal is the welterweight strap. The focus is going to be there.”
The belt currently held by Belal Muhammad is what “MVP” has his eye on, and he feels as if the 170lb weight class is in a state of flux at the moment. Or, as he put it Wednesday, “I just feel like the welterweight division at the moment, it’s a bit broken, in terms of all the guys you would normally put your money on to win, a lot of them are losing.”
“There’s a shift going on in that division, and I don’t feel like the belt is secure in anybody’s hands. Which is a great time to attach for the belt. So that’s my goal. Whatever steps and whoever that means that I need to fight to get there, that’s what I’m going to do.”
While the move to 185lbs might come as a bit of a surprise, it’s actually what Michael Page asked for when he called out Shara Bullet. “To be fair it was me that called out in the first place. So when I called out, I wasn’t asking him to move, I was saying, because I was doing the jiu-jitsu competition Polaris at the time, I was like ‘I’m out of your weight now, so we can do it,'” Page recalled. “So I knew I was going to be doing it at that weight if it was to happen. It was never going to be an issue for me.”
As for the higher weight, well that means less of a cut. Which certainly has some beneficial side effects. “I keep forgetting I’m fighting. That’s usually the big stress this week. I kind of enjoy the media stuff, but the stressful part is just, you physically fee drained. But not at all [this week]. Obviously I still have to do a cut, but it’s just not the same stress levels at all.”
Watch the full UFC Saudi Arabia media day appearance by Michael Page above.