Chris Weidman often reminded about 1-5, plans on correcting things at UFC on ESPN+ 32

LAS VEGAS — Hey, did you hear that former UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman is 1-5 in his past six fights?

Weidman (14-5 MMA, 10-5 UFC) sure has, over and over. But at least the Long Island native maintains a good sense of humor about things as he gets asked repeatedly about how he’s going to turn things around.

“I’m 1-5 last in my last six fights, which is something that everybody wants me to say, so there you go,” Weidman said with a smile during Thursday’s UFC on ESPN+ 32 media day.

Weidman returns to the division for which he was champion for more than two years after a one-fight detour to light heavyweight, when he meets Omari Akhmedov in the co-feature fight of Saturday night’s event in Las Vegas.

And while yes, there’s no avoiding the fact Weidman, who was once 13-0, has seen things go south over the past five years, there’s also the matter of the way that stretch has played out.

Weidman has fought killers all along the way, and in the vast majority of the bouts, was winning before mistakes led to defeat, with the exception of his October fight at 205 pounds against Dominick Reyes, a first-round TKO loss.

“It’s all fights that they’re top five guys that I was right in there with and there’s no shame in that,” he said. “They’re all guys I was doing really well against them, other than the (Dominick) Reyes fight. He got me, he kind of got me early, so I wasn’t able to get as much out of that as I’d like to.”

So if you’re in Weidman’s camp, you see a path back to the top which becomes clearer than a quick glance at the record might seem to indicate.

“And that’s sometimes how mixed martial arts works. So I just know what my potential is, and I know that I did everything right in training, and I’m just going to go out there and put everything on the line and we’ll see what happens.”

Meanwhile, Weidman, who is now 36 — another fact he gets reminded of on a regular basis — had to get used to once again getting within range of the middleweight limit, and he’s willing to admit it’s getting a bit tougher as time goes on.

“My last time making ’85 was 2018 so I just had a couple years of not having to keep my body weight, my body is not as accustomed to getting down quick like it was in the past. So I think that coupled getting a little older slows it down a little bit, as for how fast you can get it off and how quickly it can take.”

The former champ knows he’s not in position to make callouts at the moment. But he’s just as sure that an impressive victory over Akhmedov (20-4-1 MMA, 8-3-1 UFC) at UFC on ESPN+ 32 puts him right back in the middleweight mix.

“The division is definitely exciting right now, and I think my fight will speak for itself and it will put me right in the mix of all that pretty quickly,” he said.

UFC on ESPN+32 takes place Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. The card streams on ESPN+.