Chris Weidman’s light-heavyweight debut could scarcely have gone worse, being KO’d by Dominick Reyes in less than two minutes, but it’s not put him off thinking about returning to the Octagon sooner rather than later.
“In a perfect world – I mean, I’m healthy already – February, March, something like that,” Weidman told Ariel Helwani on ESPN. “Yeah pretty quick. Listen, I know it sounds crazy: ‘You just got knocked out, what are you coming back quick for?’ But it wasn’t like I got knocked out cold. Literally, like, legs went out from underneath me, he was hitting me with shots, and I remember the whole thing. I had no concussion symptoms like I’ve had concussion symptoms over the years from some of my fights. And you know when your brain needs a rest. This time, it wasn’t that situation at all.”
While that may be true, Weidman appears to be glossing over the fact that he’s now been stopped by strikes in five of his last six fights.
That run began with at TKO loss against Luke Rockhold, then a brutal flying knee KO stoppage to Yoel Romero, and Gegard Mousasi followed suit by dishing out another TKO defeat by way of knees.
Weidman did briefly break that streak with a submission over Kelvin Gastelum, but he’s since been knocked out by Ronaldo ‘Jacare’ Souza a year ago and together with this latest one against Reyes it does feel like a more serious cause for concern than the former middleweight champion is making out.
However, Weidman has acknowledged that a move back down to 185lbs might be on the cards.
“I could make (1)85 again. 205 was fun. It was less stressful, and I feel like I could beat anybody up , but we’ve just got to look at the divisions and figure it out. So I’m not sure if I’m going to go back down to ’85 or stay at 205.”
