Josh Barnett’s Plan For 2014: Kill, Kill, Kill

Josh Barnett’s return to the UFC has been bittersweet; ‘The Warmaster’ debuted against Frank Mir and scored a dominating first round TKO, but was subjected to similar treatment in his next bout against Travis Browne. ‘Hapa’ unleashed a flurry of elbows just 60 seconds in to their UFC 168 bout, knocking Barnett clean out.

Barnett didn’t seem to be the blood thirsty animal that we are used to, and he appeared on The MMA Hour to discuss his mindset and performance at 168:

“Honestly, it wasn’t about what went wrong. Sometimes you just don’t appear, man. After 17 years, I can’t say that I’ve had tougher nights, or you’ve had nights were you didn’t perform as well as you’d like to. But this was the only time I’d ever had where it was just… I just didn’t show up at all. I really feel like I didn’t even have a fight.”

This isn’t the first time that we have seen this in MMA, it ironically mirrors Frank Mir’s performance at 164 and his outing against Shane Carwin. It just goes to show that all the training in the world won’t compensate for a lack of concentration.

“Me, ‘the Warmaster,’ Josh Barnett, he didn’t show up. Some other guy walked into the ring and sort of piddled around a little bit., but that’s not me, and it was very strange. But I figure after being in so many fights and being through this whole process for so long, it’s really not too surprising that it could happen.”

We are yet to hear about Barnett’s next opponent, but he has outlined his game plan for MMA in 2014. Like all good plans, ‘The Warmaster’ has set out a 12 step programme to help:

1. Remove outside distractions

2. Move training camp away from home

3. Pre-camp harder!

4. Increase flexibility

5. Work more on weaknesses

6. Spend more time on recovery

7. Work on learning a new language

8. Kill

9. Kill

10. Kill

11. Kill

12. Kill