Urijah Faber -‘I’ll go down to 135 and then go up to 155’
Fans and media often ask if he’d like a rematch with Griffin, and the answer always has been no; 145…
Fans and media often ask if he’d like a rematch with Griffin, and the answer always has been no; 145 pounds suits him just fine.
But during a Q&A session for UFC Fight Club members on Thursday, Faber said he recently had reconsidered that longstanding statement.
“I’ll be around here for a while, and I’d love to get that fight again,” Faber said at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas.
After the Griffin loss, Faber went on a tear in the featherweight division with 13 consecutive wins in three years. He became a breakout star in the Zuffa LLC-owned WEC.
At one time, in fact, the Griffin vs. Faber II rumors were so rampant that Griffin had to debunk them. He told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) in 2008 that it would be nearly impossible for him to make the drop to 145 pounds and that the UFC’s lightweight division offered him plenty of challenges. Still, interest in the rematch remains.
Regardless, in his next fight, Faber headlines the WEC’s first pay-per-view effort when he takes on current featherweight champion Jose Aldo at WEC 48 on April 24. The card takes place at ARCO Arena in Faber’s hometown of Sacramento, Calif., where he most recently defeated Junior Assuncao in front of a partisan crowd. The promotion banked on Faber’s wild popularity in choosing the California capital as the event’s location.
Yet, Faber that said while he will likely stay at featherweight, a win over Aldo could be a gateway to moving down or up a class for superfights as other 145-pound challengers materialize.
Faber said a move down would probably precede a move up.
“I’ll probably go down to 135 (pounds) [then] go up to 155,” he said. “I don’t want to fight any of my buddies at [135 pounds]. I’ll just fight people I don’t like, and fights the fans want to see.
“(It’s the) same with going up in weight. I’m not trying to mow through the weight class; I’m trying to fight superfights that fans want to see. At this point for me, I’ve had 26 fights, and I just want to do big, exciting fights. Go up? Go down? It’s all good.”
As before, Faber admitted his frame is not ideal for fighting at lightweight.
“I wrestled in college at 113 pounds for five years,” he said. “I know I could go to [135 pounds] if I wanted, but I’ve also been trying to put on weight for the last six years, so I feel most comfortable at [145].
“I would feel really comfortable at [155], but I would be at a disadvantage size-wise with my body structure and everything, and I’d be just about right at [135].”
