The UFC Double Champion Pandemic

In a recent interview with SkySports, the UFC Welterweight Champion, Leon Edwards revealed he has plans to move up to Middleweight to fight the winner of Sean Strickland vs Dricus Du Plessis in an attempt to become the first English two-division champion.

Edwards said:

“The division right now, there’s no one that’s exciting in the division so for me to go out there to do that, that would be perfect.”

“UFC 300, I like that. To put me on that card would be massive. Let’s see.”

Due to these comments, Edwards has received a lot of backlash as there are a multitude of contenders in the Welterweight division many of which have reasonable cause to gain a title shot next if he’s to successfully defend his title against Colby Covington at UFC 296 in December.

Belal Muhammad has been waiting in the wings for a title shot for a couple of years now and if undefeated Shavkat Rakhmanov is able to continue his 100% finish rate against Stephen Thompson on the undercard of UFC 296 he’d definitely be in with a shout of becoming the number one contender.

The issue many fans have with Edwards’ comments is that he hasn’t cleared out his division before looking up at the next weight class, which ultimately slows down the progression of his division.

Edwards isn’t the only one who’s been looking elsewhere for a potential title shot. Former Light Heavyweight Champion Jamahal Hill has called out the new Interim Heavyweight King, Tom Aspinall after his incredible win against Sergei Pavlovich at UFC 295.

The American said: “I think Tom is a stud, I think Tom is like the new prototype of what heavyweights are,” Hill told TNT Sports. “I definitely wanna do my thing at 205 and then go up and eventually see him too. So Tom, get ready for me baby, someday. I think he has great movement. I think his coaches focus on a lot of good things, the right things to give him an edge in this game. A lot of them have the same philosophy as my coaches have and employ with me and things like that. I think he’s definitely built the right way, the way fighters should be built. It’s exciting. I’m game. I’m always game. Any time I see somebody exciting or new or they’re bringing something fresh to the cage, I wanna test myself against that.”

These comments by Hill also caused controversy as fans believe he should be focused on regaining and then defending the Light Heavyweight Title before looking elsewhere.

Those two are just the recent comments we’ve seen from champions. 125lb champion Alexandre Pantoja has talked extensively about fighting 135lb champion Sean O’Malley. O’Malley has talked about moving up to fight Alex Volkanovski. Volkanovski just fought 155lb champion Islam Makhachev for the 2nd time and Islam Makhachev wants to fight Leon Edwards after he faces Charles Oliveira.

A couple of these men have only recently picked up their titles and haven’t even defended them yet, which to many is odd as to why they’d look elsewhere for a belt at this moment in time.

We’re currently in an era where everybody is racing to be a double champion and not earning their stripes in their division before moving up. If this trend were to actually continuously take place, would cause every single division to feel stagnant, especially when a lot of these fighters only compete at most twice a year.