Anthony Pettis recently floated the idea of moving up to welterweight to fight Stephen Thompson and it seems the UFC liked the idea as the bout is now in the works for UFC On ESPN+ 6 in Nashville on March 23rd.
It’s a bold move by the former lightweight champion to call out one of the 170lb division’s leading talents, especially given that he’s coming off a tough TKO loss against Tony Ferguson that saw his corner wave of the fight after the end of a second round shellacking.
Pettis has also experimented with dropping down to featherweight not so long ago, during which he picked up a win over Charles Oliveira and a loss against Max Holloway, and since moving back to lightweight he’s gone 2-2, with his wins coming against Jim Miller and Michael Chiesa, while his other loss was via submission due to an injury against Dustin Poirier.
Now he’ll step up a weight class, where he’ll be giving up height and reach to ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson, who is coming off a decision loss against Darren Till.
Previously Thompson had outpointed Jorge Masvidal on the scorecards to get back to winning ways after back-to-back title encounters with Tyron Woodley, which had seen him earn a majority draw followed by a majority decision loss.
