Ilir Latifi taking wait-and-see approach to heavyweight move before UFC 247

HOUSTON – Ilir Latifi is certainly enjoying life as a heavyweight, but he’s not ruling out a move back down to 205 pounds, either.

Latifi (14-7 MMA, 7-5 UFC) will make his heavyweight debut Saturday against Derrick Lewis at UFC 247. And while fight week has been a lot easier to deal with without having to cut weight, Latifi didn’t definitively say that solely heavyweight is his future.

“Right now this is where I feel comfortable fighting, in heavyweight, but you never know in the future,” Latifi said at the UFC 247 athlete panel held Wednesday. “Maybe I’ll go down again, so I’m open to fighting in both divisions.

“I cut around 35 pounds, so it was pretty big weight cuts, and I’ve done that enough. It’s pretty nice coming into fight week and being able to eat good food and stuff. I’m not used to that, and it’s very different.”

At one point, Latifi was a rising star in the light heavyweight division, having won five of six fights. But after dropping his last two in a row to Corey Anderson and Volkan Oezdemir, he decided to make the move up.

He enters Saturday’s fight with Lewis as the betting underdog, a role that he’s learned to relish.

“To be honest, I’ve been an underdog all my life,” Latifi said. “Since I started in the UFC, I started fighting in the 205 division, everybody thought I was too small for that weight, and everyone was saying go down to 185, and I proved a lot of people wrong. Saturday let’s see, and now I went up to the heavyweight division, and I’m fighting a tough opponent, but I love the challenge and have no problem being the underdog.”

He continued, “Of course it’s a different kind of way, fighting 205 to heavyweight. You just have to adapt in the right way, so you don’t miss the positive things from fighting at light heavyweight. Of course my speed is something that I’m going to use in the heavyweight division, so putting on too much weight isn’t good either. It’s a hard balance, and it’s something that you have to find a good way to balance.”

UFC 247 takes place Saturday at Toyota Center. The main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims on ESPN and early prelims on UFC Fight Pass/ESPN+.