UFC 309: Chris Weidman knows the end is near, just not yet
Chris Weidman reacts after his victory against Bruno Silva of Brazil in a middleweight bout during the UFC Fight Night event at Boardwalk Hall Arena on March 30, 2024 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Credit: Zuffa LLC via Getty Images/Jeff Bottari
He’s 40 years old now, with enough scars, aches and pains to last a lifetime.
His 12-year-old son can strike him out on the baseball field. (And throw faster, just to really rub it in.)
Basketball games aren’t what they used to be.
“I’m a H-O-R-S-E guy now,” he said.
Still, when it comes to MMA, the sport that gave him a career and financial comfort for his family, Chris Weidman said he still feels good.
“I do feel the age with a lot of things, but not really with MMA," Weidman told Newsday on Wednesday at UFC 309 media day. "I still feel good, weirdly. My body is just used to it, knows how to adapt. It’s used to it. But every sport, I’ve slowed down.”
But, the man who fought his way out of his parents’ basement and became a four-time UFC middleweight world champion, knows his career is far closer to its end than its beginning. Or even its middle.
“I want to see what I can do under the lights and how I perform, and then we'll take it one fight at a time,” Weidman said. “Obviously my career is coming to an end. I don't have that much longer to do this, so I just want to try to go out there and do what I'm capable of, not hold anything back and see where it takes me. As long as my body still holds together and I still have motivation and excitement to train, I'll do it. I don't want to end and then have any regret like I should have kept going.”
It can be a hard fact for any professional athlete to admit internally, let alone for others to hear. Perhaps harder for fighters, who toil in anonymity in local gyms as they try to fight their way to the UFC, to a featured prelim, to the main card, to a main event on pay-per-view.
Weidman (16-7) will face Eryk Anders (16-8) in a middleweight prelim at UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night. He said that even though there’s nice poetry to wrapping his career in his home state — one in which he spent many years lobbying to legalize the sport a decade ago — it’s not time. It’s not time to leave the four-ounce gloves on the octagon mat and walk off to the applause of 20,000 or so fans in the arena. Not yet.
“Madison Square Garden would have been a cool spot to do it and everything, but I just don't feel like I'm ready yet,” Weidman said. “I hope I know when I'm ready. Hopefully soon.”
This will be Weidman’s third fight since returning from a devastating leg injury suffered in a fight in 2021 that kept him sidelined for more than two years.
Most wrote off Weidman seconds after his lower right leg cracked and crumbled under him 17 seconds into his fight, or amid another of the multiple surgeries he needed to fix it. He already proved his mettle by returning the first time in 2023, but the Long Island-raised Weidman still wants more.
“I'm super competitive, and I still feel like I have more to offer,” Weidman said. “I don't want to leave when I still feel like I'm good, you know. I'm still doing my thing against all these kids in the gym and crushing it. And I think it's a cool story, you know, everything I've been through to come back and if I could put on some cool, dominant fights.”
Mark La Monica is a deputy sports editor at Newsday. He also covers mixed martial arts.
