Former UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker has all but confirmed a big career change.
Whittaker has been contemplating a light heavyweight move for a while now and is looking to make his divisional debut this summer. Whittaker is coming off back-to-back losses to current middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev and Reinier de Ridder.
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While Whittaker (26-9 MMA, 17-7 UFC) never has missed weight as a welterweight and middleweight, he wonders if the cut could be hindering his performance.
“I’m locking in now,” Whittaker told Submission Radio. “I’m locking in for June. I want to get in there. I want to fight again. I want to fight in June at 205 most likely. I’m going to give it a go. I know a lot of naysayers, small this, small that. Shut up, dude. I want to give it a go. I’m on the tail end of my career, so I’ve got to try rather than just thinking about what ifs. … I’ve been playing with the idea for a long time. During the break, I was kind of training at a heavier weight.
“I want to lock in and move in to this weight division. There’s no doubt in my mind I could make middleweight. I can make it still. I can lose the weight, but I just don’t know if it’s like, if I’m getting the best out of myself, you know, having to cut that weight because the camp performance kind of really suffers on the backend of a weight cut, and a lot of fighters can testify that. I don’t know. Try something different. It’s my life.”
Whittaker revealed that his walk-around weight is over light heavyweight.
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“I’m going to try and put on a little bit of muscle, but I’m not going to put too much,” Whittaker said. “I walk around heavy anyway. I’m heavy. I walk around like 107, 108 (kilos), just cruising. Obviously that’s not shredded, so I want to try and bring that back, shred up, just train fed, train fully fueled, and get the most out of my camps, and come into fight week feeling good for once.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: UFC’s Robert Whittaker locking in toward light heavyweight move
