Veteran UFC featherweight Cub Swanson says he is open to cross-divisional fights with Anthony Pettis, Urijah Faber, and Jose Aldo.

Swanson’s return to the Octagon was recently announced as he will take on Daniel Pineda next month at UFC 256. Swanson has been a member of the UFC roster since 2011 and has been one of the top-15 ranked fighters in the division for most of that time. However, he suffered a four-fight losing skid between 2017 and 2019 before finally snapping it with a “Fight of the Night” decision win over Kron Gracie last fall.

Unfortunately for Swanson, he has missed the last year with injuries, but at age 37, he’s ready to make an incredible comeback to the UFC. Speaking with MMAjunkie.com, Swanson said that being away for so long and being dropped from the rankings actually helps him. According to the veteran, falling out of the rankings at 145lbs makes it more likely that he would move to 155lbs or 135lbs for fights against former UFC champions.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about – because I’m not ranked right now that was kinda freeing actually. It was funny. I was actually talking to Dominick Cruz one day at the (UFC Performance Institute), and he was asking me about fights, this and that, and I was like I could only fight certain people because I was ranked. And he was like, ‘Tell them to unrank you.’ And I was like, what? I had never even thought of that. Like, who would ask for that? But at this point in my career it was a little freeing because I could fight anybody,” Swanson said.

“It made me think of the possibilities of fighting at (135 pounds), fighting at 55. There are fights that I’ve always thought would be great like at 55, a friend of mine, Anthony Pettis, at 35, Urijah Faber. I could even fight Aldo at 35, so there’s a lot of possibilities. I could see that in the later part of my career they’d want to see some old school WEC matchups.”

Swanson is no longer in title contention at 145lbs and so it makes sense that he would be thinking about taking the biggest fights he can while he’s still an active fighter. While he has fought the majority of his career as a featherweight, the prospect of him moving to bantamweight or lightweight to fight other notable veteran names is very exciting.

Who do you want to see Cub Swanson fight next?