The championship fights at the top of the UFC 273 card were apparently enough to inspire Henry Cejudo to come out of retirement.
Cejudo’s manager, Ali Abdelaziz, informed ESPN that the former UFC two-division champion will re-enter the USADA drug testing pool on Monday. Fighters are generally subject to six months of drug testing before they can return to active competition, according to the UFC’s anti-doping policy.
"Henry will focus on his fight and training," Abdelaziz told ESPN. "He never stopped training. I truly believe Henry can come back to win the [bantamweight] title and go up to 145 and win that. He will be the only fighter in UFC history to win three world titles.”
Shortly after the conclusion of UFC 273, Cejudo tweeted, “I’m getting back in the pool,” which signaled that the Olympic gold medalist is planning to end his retirement. UFC 273 saw Alexander Volkanovski retain his featherweight belt with a fourth-round stoppage of Chan Sung Jung in the main event, while Aljamain Sterling unified the bantamweight crown with a split-decision triumph over Petr Yan. Both could be potential targets for Cejudo if he follows through with his comeback.
"[Volkanovski] you’ve inspired me to come back,” Cejudo wrote on Twitter Sunday night. “When it comes to wrestling…you couldn’t pin a tweet. I would take you down and choke you out quicker than a McGregor relapse. Sign the contract.”
Cejudo announced his retirement following a second-round technical knockout victory over Dominick Cruz at UFC 249 in May 2020, his first defense of the bantamweight title. Cejudo has teased a return on multiple occasions, but this appears to be the most sincere attempt. Cejudo went 10-2 in UFC competition from 2014 to 2020, posting wins over the likes of Demetrious Johnson, T.J. Dillashaw, Marlon Moraes, Sergio Pettis and Jussier Formiga while establishing himself as one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the world.
More recently, Cejudo has been a coach at Fight Ready in Arizona, helping train the likes of Jon Jones, Deiveson Figueiredo, Weili Zhang and Jiri Prochazka, to name a few.
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