Michael Venom Page is not worried about the size discrepancy that he will have to deal with inside the cage this weekend when he takes on a man who has had UFC fights as high up as heavyweight. MVP appeared on a recent episode of Mighty Cast with Demetrious Johnson and touched on his continued efforts as a middleweight fighter when he takes on a former 185-pound title challenger in the UFC.
Page will do battle with Jared Cannonier at UFC 319, with the headlining bout on Saturday night being of massive divisional relevance as reigning middleweight champ Dricus du Plessis aims to defend his crown against the hungry, surging contender Khamzat Chimaev in Chicago. As some are heavily focusing on Cannonier's tenure as a high-level middleweight in the context of MVP normally fighting at welterweight, Page said,
"For me, this fight with [Jared] Cannonier is all about showing levels. People see Jared as this physically imposing, powerful guy, and he is, but there's more to fighting than just size and strength. I've spent my whole career making people fight me in my world, and if I do that on Saturday, it's going to look easy. The key is staying disciplined, not letting him drag me into his kind of fight, and making sure the crowd sees exactly why I do what I do."
Michael Venom Page is in part plying his trade as a middleweight as of late because of how hard it has been to lock in fights at 170 pounds lately. During an interview with Fred Talks Fighting expressing his frustrations with some of the politics at welterweight, Page [via MMA Mania],
"I actually wanted to go back down. I just find a lot of the guys at welterweight, it seems to be very political. Nobody wants to fight. Everyone wants to fight specific people, and it's a bit of a battle. I'm not in that stage of my career, I just wanna fight everybody and anybody, and not everybody is in the same place."
This is a sentiment that MVP has expressed in multiple interviews as of late, as evidenced by a Sky Sports chat embedded below, and it will be curious to see what the long-term future will look like in terms of the given weight category that Michael Venom Page will regularly fight in.