Josh Barnett Wants To Smash UFC Heavyweights And Would Love To Fight Frank Mir
Monday’s edition of the MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani was stacked with some of the biggest names in the MMA business. ‘The Mermaid’ spoke to the likes of Nick Newell, Liz Carmouche, Mike Chiesa, Josh Barnett, Daniel Cormier, Luke Rockhold and a host of other great guests.
Josh Barnett has been in the news recently for turning down a job offer from the UFC, Helwani questioned ‘The Baby Faced Assassin’ about where he thinks his career is heading:
“I know that after my last fight, contracts are contracts and business is business, but I needed some time to recover from that last fight. Not neccisarily the fight itself but the crap leading in to it. The flu (that I caught) , they were close to calling it an epidemic, it has been good to get some down-time. The right deal hasn’t really put itself together, these promotions have a lot to offer in terms of competition and the opportunity to show fights to a large audience, but you can’t just run out and start punching people without thinking about the business aspect of it. The right scenario has not presented itself yet.”
It seems Barnett does seem to have his head screwed on straight, as far as his career is concerned, as he continued:
“I want to fight in the UFC, not just because there’s people saying ‘I want you to fight Frank Mir‘-and I would love to fight Frank Mir everyday of the week, but the right people haven’t been in place to make it happen. When I was in the UFC Frank Mir wasn’t on my radar, not in my league. Everyone wants to see the fight, i’ve been a top 10 fighter longer than anyone who is active right now, I don’t feel that I can cement my legacy without being in the UFC. I wanna smash these guys faces who everyone thinks are so awesome for whatever reason.”
Something tells me that ‘The Warmaster’ will eventualy make his UFC return. Next up Ariel spoke with Daniel Cormier, after DC and Barnett exchanged some friendly banter, about octagon jitters, and Luke Rockhold:
“I told him (Rockhold) to not waste his energy before the fight, just go in there and do what you do everyday’ said the Strikeforce GP Heavyweight winner in relation to his friend Luke Rockhold. “Luke’s a special talent, and I’m glad everyone is going to get to witness it. Luke trains unbelievably hard.”
Cormier was the questioned about who he will look to fight next:
“I have no idea, I don’t know what the deal is with the whole 205 thing (regarding Roy Nelson), I was like ‘yeah let’s do it’. I want to be the champion and the only weight I can do that is at 205lb. right now. I want to be at 220lb. in my next fight so when I fight at 205lb. I will be fighting at more my natural weight, even though I weigh in at 205lb. it won’t be fighting at 205lbs….The cut sucks-it’s hard, but once you weigh in it’s just about re-hydrating. The biggest part is shrinking yourself to get to that weight, I don’t plan on cutting a lot of weight off, I’m not going to be at 225 and cutting water weight. I’m going to do it right. I’m eying a future in 205 but if it doesn’t work out I can just go back to Heavyweight. I have no opinion of who I fight, I don’t care-just give me someone to fight!”
Check out the full video below courtesy of MMAFighting and stay tuned to Lowkick!
