It’s only been a matter of days since submission wizard Charles Oliveira finally reached the peak of the MMA mountain by coming home with the UFC Lightweight World Championship, but now it seems like he could easily be tempted in returning to the Featherweight division. The UFC’s newest champion has fought in that division plenty of times before and has actually spent a total of 12 UFC fights at Featherweight, although he did gain a reputation for missing weight with increasing frequency as the years went on.
Oliveira went 7-5 in the UFC at Featherweight and missed weight on a total of four times before deciding to move up to Lightweight and finding the recent form that has saw him get his first shot at a title. During his time in the division, he fought some of the best fighters available like Max Holloway, Anthony Pettis, Ricardo Lamas, and Frankie Edgar. Despite his mixed results back then, Oliveira has always been an exciting fighter and finishing machine as he managed to rack up one submission of the night, two fight of the night, and three performance of the night bonuses in those twelve fights.
According to MMA Fighting, Charles Oliveira spoke to reporters after winning the Lightweight title and said: “I still feel like a featherweight, if Dana White gave me the opportunity to go back to the featherweight division and win, I’d take it.”
Although nothing concrete is in the works yet, it’s exciting news to think that Oliveira might be able to add his name to the ever-growing list of double-champions in the UFC. Before that however, he has already announced his intention to fight the winner of the previous match between Dustin Poirier and Conor McGregor. Now that fight is due to be run back to determine the winner between those two men in the final fight of the trilogy, it’s incredibly likely that the winner becomes Oliveira’s first title-defense. Besides that, it remains to be seen if Oliveira could be the man who might be able to tease the undefeated Khabib Nurmagomedov out of retirement to attempt to extend his phenomenal record to 30-0, even though Josh Thomson seems to think so.
