By: Darnell Myrick

At UFC 131 this past weekend in Vancouver, BC, Kenny Florian made his featherweight debut against Diego “The Gun” Nunes. He was able to defeat Nunes by unanimous decision. By cutting down to the 145-pound division, he became the first man UFC history to compete in four different weight classes. (middleweight, welterweight, lightweight, and now featherweight). Florian had to endure a tough weight cut by dropping 40 pounds in order to make weight. Also, Florian was just coming off of knee surgery that forced his off of the UFC Fight for the Troops event back in January. In this fight against Nunes, he looked like the bigger man by out-muscling Nunes and wearing him down to the point that Nunes was exhausted. After the fight was over during the post-fight press conference, he jokingly said that he would like to drop down to the 135-division.

Florian has a 12-4 record in the UFC with wins over Clay Guida, Joe Stevenson, Takanori Gomi, and many other notable fighters. He is a two-time lightweight championship contender, but in his fights, he lost to Sean Sherk and BJ Penn. With a drop to the featherweight division, he becomes one of the more popular fighters in the division, especially due to the fact that the UFC audience is still adjusting to the new division.

Florian doesn’t make any decisions in the UFC, but he does feel that with the win against Nunes, he should be a top contender for the featherweight championship. Florian has wanted to fight current featherweight champion, Jose Aldo, for a long time now. It has been brought up to him in the past, but the fight would at lightweight. With the cut to featherweight and no top contender is set to fight Jose Aldo, it only makes sense to have them fight now and for the featherweight championship. If this fight does come to fruition, it would possibly happen during the fall as Aldo is just coming off of injuries suffered in his fight with Mark Hominick at UFC 129 in April.