Matt Hughes Almost Fought For The UFC Middleweight Title During His Glory Days
Longtime welterweight titleholder Matt Hughes is one of the greatest UFC fighters ever but never accomplished holding a UFC title in two different weight classes unlike Randy Couture and BJ Penn, who have.
Hughes commented on this during this year’s induction ceremonies for the UFC Hall of Fame during International Fight Week. According to Hughes, he once had plans to move up to middleweight to attempt to add another belt to his collection.
“I never asked to fight anybody,” Hughes said during the ceremonies. “I didn’t. I was the guy who just took who came against me, whoever (UFC President) Dana White called me and said (I was) going to fight. That’s who I fought. I never wanted to fight anybody (specific).
“But I did want to go up to 185 a couple times and maybe try to fight the champion.”
Hughes, who held the welterweight belt from 2001-2004 and 2004-2006, said that if he was going to fight for the 185lb title then it would have been against Evan Tanner, who at the time was the UFC middleweight champion.
He will not fight for the middleweight title ever as he officially retired in 2013 (but hadn’t fought since 2011), and finished his career with a 45-9 MMA, 18-7 UFC record and is a 2010 UFC Hall of Famer.
Oh what could’ve been….
