Urijah Faber suffered one of the toughest losses of his career at UFC 245 on Saturday night after being KO’d for the first time by Petr Yan, and he admits he always knew it was going to be a tough fight.
“I mean he’s very tough, but I knew he was tough,” Faber said on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show. “I felt like he’s one of the most dangerous guys, period, in the division. I knew that going in, and that’s kind of why I wanted to fight – aside from the guys on my team, Song Yadong and Cody Garbrandt, are both faster and just as powerful and a little more well-rounded, but I knew that was going to be a nasty fight. I knew I would have a chance to catch him, but he had a very good chance of catching me.”
Faber did register a win over Ricky Simon earlier in the year after making a comeback to the sport at the age of 40, but while it seems he’s not made up his mind yet what he’s going to do next, it seems this past weekend’s loss has left him ruling out any thoughts of trying to battle his way to another title shot.
“I’m not going to be pursuing the belt at this moment. I’m going to be chilling with the family, staying in great shape, staying in the gym, and it’s a ‘I could or I couldn’t.’”
If he does return at some stage it’ll have to be for an interesting opportunity though.
“I’m not doing a fight just to have a fight. I’ll do it on my terms if I want to do it to celebrate my birthday, or if there’s something that’s really intriguing.”
