At 38 years old, Gilbert Burns understands the end of his competitive fighting career draws near.
These days, it’s as much of a battle to stay healthy and recover from training than to battle the best 170-pounders in the UFC two to three times a year.
“It’s kind of hard right now to keep my body 100 percent healthy,” Burns explained to The Post during a Tuesday video call. “I’m getting a little bit more injured, so I gotta slow down my pace. I gotta train, but then I gotta do a lot more recovery.”
All that aside, the former UFC welterweight title challenger believes he can still hang with the elite of the division, and he has every intention of showing it Saturday (7 p.m., ESPN+) when he takes on Sean Brady in a UFC Fight Night main event at UFC Apex in Las Vegas.
A cursory look at Burns’ recent results reveals the first losing skid of his career coming into this one, with the Brazilian having lost three of five dating back to 2022.
But the names attached to those blemishes — men who handed “Durinho” his setbacks — are truly elite: Khamzat Chimaev, the unbeaten monster who now seems to have sized out of welterweight; Belal Muhammad, the current champion at 170; and Jack Della Maddalena, who within a year could be the guy who takes the belt off the champ.
And even at that, Burns was roughly 90 seconds from beating Della Maddalena in March on the scorecards before a stunning reversal of fortune saw the Aussie storm back with a knee and elbows for the knockout; even the Chimaev loss — a 2022 Fight of the Year contender — could conceivably have been scored his way without cries of “robbery.”
All that is to say that, even if training is getting harder than ever after 12 years as a pro fighter, there is reason for Burns (22-7, 15 finishes) to validate his place among the top 10 in the UFC’s own rankings, sitting at No. 6 and looking down a few pegs at Philadelphia native Brady (16-1, eight finishes).
“Whenever I’m at my best, even at training or in a fight, I still feel like I can beat so many guys out there,” Burns says. “I still have a lot of fight in me.”
“A lot” isn’t in the neighborhood of 20 fights, he says, but a march toward one more shot at the championship that eluded him against Kamaru Usman in 2021 is the carrot dangling in front of him to push him through the daunting loop of training and recovering — a regimen including red light therapy, compression therapy and a hyperbaric chamber, plus physical therapy.
Seeing a fellow fighter who’s on the wrong side of 30 capture gold over the summer certainly served to inspire Burns, as former foe Muhammad earned a dominant decision against Leon Edwards to claim the crown just weeks after turning 36, becoming one of the few fighters ever at 170 or less to win a UFC title fight after turning 35.
Getting back to the point of a rematch with Muhammad — this time, he hopes, with UFC gold on the line — won’t happen overnight, given the consecutive losses against the champ and Della Maddalena that Burns carries into the Brady fight.
That loss to Muhammad in Newark, N.J., last May, when Burns says he injured his shoulder early on and only managed some minority scoring attention from the judges in the final two frames of their five-round clash, particularly sticks in his craw.
“I want that rematch back,” Burns says. “That’s the one that was very hard for me to swallow. … I hope when I make it back to the title, he’s the one holding [the belt], and we’ll make that rematch.”
But facing the 31-year-old who’s best known for his grappling is welcome for Burns, who is perhaps at his best on the mat but hasn’t always had the opportunity to show it since leaving lightweight behind in 2019..
“I hope we’ll grapple. I think we’re gonna grapple,” says Burns, a former world-class submission grappler before putting his full energy behind his MMA career. “I’m gonna look for grappling. I’m gonna look for takedowns. … We might avoid each other, and it might be a battle on the feet, but maybe I get a good takedown; maybe he gets a takedown and we’ll grapple. I’m excited to see. I still think strongly that we’re gonna grapple.”
Brady enters having bounced back with a submission win in December against Kelvin Gastelum — after a TKO loss the previous year to Muhammad that marked the first setback of his career.
In no way is Burns expecting to run through the younger Brady, even if he is convinced the night will belong to him when the dust settles.
“I believe I’m gonna beat Sean Brady. I don’t think it’s gonna be easy,” Burns said. “I think I might get in trouble a little bit; I might put him in trouble a little bit. But I do believe, at the end of the night, I’m gonna win that fight.”
And when he does, Burns fully intends on offering a few names for the next one in order to manifest his championship destiny, with all of them having been one or both halves of the last 10 welterweight title showdowns.
“I’m looking forward to a No. 1 contender fight,” he says, “so we’ve got Leon Edwards, Kamaru Usman, or Colby Covington. Those are the guys I’m looking forward to after I beat Sean Brady, to fight one of these guys and earn a title shot with a win over these guys.”