Kamaru Usman: The 30% comments are getting old

On January 14, 2018, at UFC Fight Night 124, welterweight Kamaru Usman put on a dominating, wrestling-heavy, fan-unfriendly performance vs. Emil Meek. It gave ‘The Nigerian Nightmare’ the longest win streak in the division. Then with the St. Louis crowd booing, Usman offered some much-misconstrued words.

“Listen, I fought at about 30 percent,” he began. “That was 30 percent and I still dominated a tough, so-called Viking. Dominated him, and that was at 30 percent. … Dana, I’m coming to sit with you. We’ll talk.”

UFC president Dana White was not impressed.

“You don’t jump up and start acting like you knocked somebody out and say you only went 30 percent, said White on the FOX Sports 1 post-fight show. “It’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard somebody say, and you’re getting booed out of the arena on top of it.”

Usman immediately responded on his social network, explaining that the 30% remarks were a reference to his health, not his effort. During a recent appearance on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour, Usman clarified further and took pointed issue with White’s reaction.

I don’t regret saying it because I spoke from my heart, said Usman, as transcribed by Alexander K. Lee for MMA Fighting. When you get done with the fight, especially that fight, because there was a lot of frustrating things happening that led up to that fight. He comes in the UFC, he’s riding a 1-0 decision, and you’re giving him to a top-15 guy like myself because nobody else above me wants to fight with me. So that itself already irked me, irritated me, and then I couldn’t get anybody else.

Then he had Visa issues, the fight was off, canceled, then the fight was rescheduled. I got sick through the process. On top of it, I get these really serious injuries that hindered me from performing the way that I want to perform. So when everyone’s thinking, ‘Oh that guy’s so tough, you couldn’t stand with the guy’ — if you go back and watch the fight, just keeping the fight standing, I hit him whenever I wanted to hit him. I just had some injuries that didn’t allow me to feel comfortable in that position, which is why the fight ended up going to the ground and I had to resort to beating him up on the ground.

But with that being said, after the fight you get really emotional, and that fight was really emotional for me because I kind of felt like I was being set up to fail in a sense, but I went through the fight anyways and still dominated a really tough guy.

I meant I literally was maybe 30-percent of my abilities, which is what I stated, but of course, when you have a president that is so powerful like Dana White and he goes out in the media and says what he says, everyone just jumps on it. I swear if Dana says that, ‘You know what? An earthquake is going to happen tomorrow,’ everyone’s going to jump on it, ‘Oh, an earthquake’s going to happen tomorrow.’ That’s just the way that these UFC fans are.

So once Dana said that, it was just the backlash of it and whatnot, but what I meant to say was I was at 30-percent health. Dana took it the wrong way, so fans took it the wrong way.

I am what I am, I don’t regret anything. There’s a blessing in everything that happens to us. Yes, of course, it’s getting kind of old, because every time you look at one of my pictures, comments or anything like that, all fans seem to want to talk about is 30 percent, 30 percent, 30 percent. So after that Dana said, ‘Will you go 60 percent next time?’ He can expect me to go way more than 30 percent this next fight, that’s for sure.

This next time, Usman, ranked #7 in the division, fights #10 ranked Santiago Ponzinibbio, in the main event of UFC Fight Night 129 on May 19, 2018, at Movistar Arena in Santiago, Chile. The winner could get a title shot.