Josh Barnett may very well be the most underrated heavyweight fighter in the United States. A former UFC Heavyweight title holder, the Baby-Faced Assassin holds a stunning MMA record of 23-5-0. His last three fights include a knock-out win against Pedro Rizzo at Affliction: Banned on July 19th and back-to-back wins at Sengoku; a unanimous decision against Jeff Monson and a submission win using a heel hook against Hidehiko Yoshida. Barnett will be fighting ay Affliction: Day of Reckoning on January 24 in Anaheim, California.
Yael - Tell us about your next opponent.
Josh Barnett - I’ll be fighting Gilbert Yvel, who’s a Dutch kickboxer. He’s been fighting MMA for quite some time and has a little over 40 fights right now.
Yael - Yvel has had fights disqualified for biting an opponent, he knocked out a ref and he also eye gouged Don Frye.
Josh Barnett - Yeah. He had some DQs a few times in his career, that’s true, but it’s been quite some time since he’s had any problems. Anyway, I don’t care about that. All I care about is that I have a fight.
Yael - How did he even get cleared to fight?
Josh Barnett - I guess he’s not entirely cleared to fight, but it’s looking like there’s a strong possibility.
Yael - You’re ranked 3rd in the heavyweight division, under Arlovski and Fedor who are fighting each other on the same card. Are you going to fight the winner of that bout?
Josh Barnett - I guess that could happen. The only fight that matters to me is the fight that’s in front of me. Rankings certainly down at the lower half of things change very frequently. I don’t care about rankings anyway.
Yael - Right, but that’s the fight that the fans really want to see.
Josh Barnett - Well, it’s not really within my power.
Yael - So let’s talk about your upcoming fight. Weren’t you also supposed to fight Brett Rogers?
Josh Barnett - Yes, that was talked about and I was okay with fighting him, but I guess you’d really have to ask Affliction why it didn’t happen. I believe the problems with Elite XC owning the contracts could be part of it.
Yael - You knocked Randy Couture out back in 2002 when he was still in his prime, and about a year ago called him a paper champion. Do you think Brock Lesnar is a paper champion?
Josh Barnett - Uh, well, I guess if I had to go back to when I said that I guess it has to stick. I don’t know. Mainly that was said in response to the usual obscenity-filled tirades by Dana White at the time when he proclaimed that Randy was unbeatable, that nobody could beat this guy. This was in a press conference when I was actually in the room and I had to speak up and he ignored me but the media was paying attention and ran with it.
Obviously Randy is a fine fighter and is doing things most people wouldn’t even dream of at his age, but Brock logically shouldn’t be at a title fight this early on in his career. But I think it’s something commendable that he could succeed this early on… Belts, well, I wouldn’t say that they’re worthless because they are worth 7 grand I hear, but there are a lot of people that have belts that really shouldn’t have them. I’ve always said that Brock should have beaten Randy style-wise. Anyways, there’s a possibility he could lose to Mir, and that’s really got to do with the way they match up.
Yael - 7 grand huh? Belts are pretty heavy.
Josh Barnett - Yeah, but Brock will have a good 20 lbs on Mir anyway, or more, it depends on the size of sandwich he eats earlier that day.
Yael - Mir really looked good in his last fight.
Josh Barnett - Yeah, but I think what is shocking is how, not good, Nougeira looked. I’m sure Mir is sick of hearing how Nog is washed up instead of how Mir performed well, but it’s the biggest victory he has to date, and anyone who’s followed Nog and seen him fight in the past knows that he just looked so terrible.
Yael - Would you want to fight Nog a 3rd time?
Josh Barnett – Absolutely. I don’t care if he’s washed up I just want to beat the crap out of him.
Yael - Do you have any other dream matches?
Josh Barnett - I’ve always wanted to fight Alexander Karelin, the many-time Olympic gold medalist and Greco wrestler, but he’s not a fighter. At one time he was thought of as the most impressive athlete on the planet. Now he’s got to be kind of long in the tooth, too, so maybe I can kick his walker out from under him one day.
Yael - Any chance you’ll ever fight in UFC again? There were some rumors about a year ago about them potentially signing you.
Josh Barnett - Maybe when I was a free agent from Pride, but they never really made me an offer so I guess they weren’t interested. To be honest, I don’t really know what Dana White’s problem with me is, but when he makes blanket statements like saying Randy Couture is the best fighter in the world, if I’m a fellow heavyweight and I’ve already beaten him, I’m going to say something. Say what you mean, Dana, don’t just spout whatever. I just don’t let people get away with running their mouths, especially when I’m in a rival organization and he’s going to say something about the company I work for. But I’m a business man; I don’t really have to like anybody in the fight business. I just need to do my job and do my job better than anyone else.
Yael - When can we expect your next installment of catch wrestling instructionals?
Josh Barnett - Well, I’m not exactly sure because it’s hard to find the time to get in there and get the stuff shot, but also Scientific Wrestling with Jake Shannon moved to Utah which makes that even more difficult. But there’s some plans to maybe have me come to Utah to do a seminar and shoot the next DVD instructional which will be all on armlocks. My intention was the series to be a primer for catch as catch can, just an introduction, but the basics I’ve always found is what wins the most. And there’s stuff covered even people of an advanced nature will be interested in.
It all starts with amateur wrestling. The couple DVDs I’ve put out so far all have to do with being on top, but my opinion is why fight on the bottom if you can be on top? Certainly it looked like Forrest Griffin had a better bottom game than Rashad from what we’ve seen so far, but it didn’t really matter when he got knocked out.
Yael - That was a good fight.
Josh Barnett - Forest’s incredibly tough. He had a game plan, but it just takes one shot. When you’re on top, you’re the one throwing punches, not the guy on the bottom.
Yael - Unless you’re from Team Bison.
Josh Barnett - There is that! Still I’d rather be on top.
Yael - Anything else you want to add?
Josh Barnett - Just that I’m really hoping that women’s MMA gets a nice platform to work off of. It’s been pretty depressing not to watch a bunch of women’s fights, and for the girls I work with not to have the opportunity to fight. But at least there’s the G-Fight Summit coming up, that’s one show and a lot of women.
There are just not that many opportunities for girls to fight, not to mention when you have someone like Megumi Fujii who’s 17-0. How to you get someone to fight them and where do you find someone to give them enough money considering she’s arguably the best female fighter on the planet
Yael - What would help women’s MMA grow?
Josh Barnett - Any company that picks up MMA needs to name themselves a little bit, start slow and start with interesting personalities, not who is the best looking or even the best fighter but people who capture the interest and attention of people who watch because otherwise nobody’s watching and nobody’s got nothing. But I think there’s no shortage of women fighters who can put on bar burner fights or fight of the night deals. It just takes someone with the know-how, money and ability to package it in a way that a network or someone will be interested in picking it up. I guess it’s not that easy. But some of these companies that have established promotions already can integrate a women’s program. And the thing is that there’s no direct competition
Yael - Are you talking all-women’s cards or just adding a few women’s fights onto the fight card?
Josh Barnett - All-women is very, very difficult; it’s easier to add women’s fights to an already-established promotion, be it locally or nationally. I’m not necessarily saying UFC, there are promotions on the other side of things that could do that and would have a better possibility to do that, like Strikeforce.
Yael - They’ve had women’s fights in the past.
Josh Barnett - They have had women’s fights, but it’s so infrequent and so random. They need 2-3 a show and legitimately build up into women’s personalities and have people wanting to watch the women fighters specifically.
Yael - Part of the problem might be that there’s so few places ranking female fighters, and so many women fight at two or three different weights just to get fights… Do you think part of the problem is that promoters don’t know where to look?
Josh Barnett - It’s not really that difficult. Find those that are willing to go out and fight at 125, 135, 145. It’s no problem to find people that can legitimately make those fights. It’s up to them whether they want to fight or not. When men first started fighting half the time we didn’t even have weight classes so at least women don’t have to deal with that fighting open weight all the time. We didn’t even have promotions.
A promotion just needs to get some solid people in the company and let them work it out first. People can be upset if people not in their top 5 worked their way into a championship fight in an organization but the proof will be in the pudding and the right fight will end up in the promotion eventually. It just always works that way.
Yael - Other than Megumi Fuji, who you’ve said is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, who are your favorite female fighters?
Josh Barnett - Well there’s Shayna Baszler and Ginele Marquez who I work with. Windy Tomomi…
Yael - The only Tomomi fight I saw was when she battled Rosi Sexton on Bodog and dislocated her leg…
Josh Barnett - Yeah, that was pretty gross, but not worse than separating a drumstick from a thigh. It’s not causing her any problems now. To show you how tough she is, she was actually asking for a rematch when we loaded her up in the van to take her to the hospital.
Yael - Yeah, female fighters are tough as nails! Thanks for sitting down with 8 Count News.
Check out Josh Barnett’s next fight on Affliction: Day of Reckoning on January 24th, and catch him on the web at http://www.joshbarnett.tv
No comments:
Post a Comment