Oklahoma City — Saturday simply wasn’t Kamaru Usman’s night, as he was soundly defeated by Dricus Du Plessis in the main event of UFC Oklahoma City.
Usman (21-5) has now lost three of his last four, but the former welterweight champ appears ready to fight on, whether it’s at 170 or 185 pounds.
At 39, Usman hasn’t been all that active the past few years. That’s something he’d like to change, if the right opportunities are presented to him, he told media outlets including Cageside Press following UFC Oklahoma City at the Paycom Center on Saturday.
“I would like to be active, but I’m not one of those guys who’s just going to stick around here just for a fight, like I can’t do anything else. I can. I’ve got a family at home. And every time I come in here I represent not just myself, I represent my coaches, I represent my team, I represent my training partners, and my family. So I want to do that in the best way possible,” stated Usman. “I’m not one of these guys that’s just going to stick around just to come in there and fight and take lumps. If the opportunity is there and presents itself, I would love to get in here regularly, but gotta heal up some things and really do some work with the coaches.”
In response to the loss, Usman admitted that “it’s tough. It’s hard to be on this side of it, and I’m not used to being on this side. So it’s a tough one, but yeah. I hate to even bring up hearing that score or dealing with the score, because that’s one thing that I kind of pattern myself, I never care about the score because I’m dominating. And unfortunately tonight I was on the end of hearing the score, and I didn’t like it.”
The score Usman is referring to is the 50-45 one judge awarded to Du Plessis. The remaining two scored at least a round for Usman.
“It is what it is. I didn’t necessarily get going,” he continued. Usman noted that Du Plessis was big, strong and rangy, and referenced a pause in the action early where “I took kind of like a thumb punch in the eye early on and that kind of blurred the vision a bit. But no excuses. It is what it is.”
Watch the full UFC Oklahoma City post-fight press conference with Kamaru Usman above.
