Sitting at 6-0 in the UFC, 10th-ranked welterweight Kamaru Usman feels that his time to enter the championship mix is now – not down the road.

“I will be the champion soon,” said Usman. “By the end of 2018.”

Usman acknowledges that this goal is ambitious, but if he is victorious against his opponent Emil Meek this Sunday at UFC Fight Night in St. Louis, he plans on changing his approach when it comes to accepting fights.

“After this fight, I am no longer going to make the mistake of taking a fight because that’s what is offered to me,” said Usman on The TSN MMA Show. “If these guys can sit here and say, ‘We’re not going to fight that guy because he’s too hard of a fight and he’s ranked below me,’ then why should I continue to say, ‘Oh, I’m going to fight this guy who’s unranked but it’s a tough guy.’ It’s going to be on the UFC now to make those matchups happen, to make those guys fight me.

“How am I supposed to move up the ladder if I can’t fight higher-ranked opponents?”

One ranked opponent that Usman had hoped to fight was third-ranked Colby Covington, who is 8-1 in the UFC and coming off his biggest win to date against Demian Maia in October.

“I was offered the fight with Colby Covington and he turned it down – he said he wanted Tyron Woodley. Unfortunately, Tyron said no and Tyron’s undergone surgery to fix his shoulder,” said Usman. “That’s the fight to make, you can’t say that I haven’t proven it. I was in the rankings before Colby Covington. I’m the only guy that has been in the rankings for almost two years now, but has declined in rankings and I haven’t lost a fight. I’ve won impressively in each fight, so what sense does that make?”

While Covington has made a name for himself with some antics outside of the cage and in his post-fight interviews, Usman has no plans to take the same approach just to get noticed.

“I’m not going to go out of character. That’s not me. I’m not going to go out of my character to try to put on a fake persona because I don’t do this because I just want to be famous and have a bunch of money. The money doesn’t hurt, but I do this because of competition,” said Usman.

Usman’s frustrations stem from seeing fighters take favourable matchups with opponents ranked below him to improve their standing while higher-ranked fighters turn down matchups with him.

“Colby Covington fights a guy that’s ranked below me, but then jumps in the rankings ahead of me. Darren Till fights one guy, then jumps in the rankings ahead of me, Rafael dos Anjos fights one guy that’s ranked below me and then jumps in the rankings ahead of me. That makes absolutely no sense and then when I ask to fight these guys, they all say no,” said Usman when asked about whether there is a systemic issue with the UFC’s current rankings system.

On top of Covington, Usman was not bashful when it came to naming other fighters who he feels have been avoiding fighting him.

“Look at my last three or four fights – I called out Demian Maia, with him sitting less than 20 feet away from me, and he said no. I called out Dong Hyun Kim and that fight never happened. I called out Neil Magny and it didn’t happen, I called out RDA (Rafael dos Anjos) and it didn’t happen,” said Usman, whose resume does not include a win over a currently ranked opponent.

From here on in, Usman plans on pursuing the right matchup that gets him into title contention rather than one that gets him into the cage sooner.

“After this fight, I’m going to be looking at a top-five fight. I’m not rushing into anything if it doesn’t propel me to the spot where I should be at, which is located in the top five, by the end of the year looking to fight for that title,” said Usman.

If Usman defeats Meek, he will be one of only eight active UFC fighters to have won seven or more straight UFC fights and will hold the second-longest active win streak in the welterweight division behind Georges St-Pierre.