"I'm still hungry as hell man. I want the title, but like I said, I'm willing to fight whoever. If a situation arises where they offer me a fight, I'm going to take it. I'm not going to sit here for Mike to get better and be the next person in line. I'd rather take the risk because when you're the champion, you don't have any options. You have to fight who they put in front of you and I want to get used to having that mentality," stated WEC featherweight contender Leonard Garcia as he talked about his future plans after his impressive win over Jens Pulver. Check out what he had to say about his performance and much more.
PC: Congrats on the win my man. Damn!
LG: (Laughing) I appreciate it man.
PC: You told me before the fight if you did what you planned on doing, you would fight again in December. You definitely came through on that. How does it feel?
LG: I feel good man. I actually asked to fight in December, but they're having some issues with the way things ended up. The champ's hurt right now. I believe I'm the #1 contender right now and there are a lot of different options man. Who knows man? Me and one of the top 10 guys might be locking horns here pretty soon, even if it's not for the title.
PC: That was one of my questions for you. With Brown being injured, would you be willing to take a fight against another contender?
LG: Yeah. I think that's what we get paid to do. We get paid to fight and I think people are going to want to see me fight anybody. It's not an issue with me of picking opponents or I'm afraid of this guy. I'll fight anybody they put in front of me and if they're willing to make the numbers right, I'm willing to take the fight.
PC: I think people felt your best chance to win would be to not bang with Jens. You worked with Duane Ludwig and seemed pretty content with banging with Pulver. Was that the case?
LG: Yeah, for sure. There were a lot of things that we worked on for this fight. Of course I worked my wrestling quite a bit for the simple fact that we figured if I didn't have the power to put him down, which was never a doubt in my camp's mind, but you always gotta bank on plan B and plan C. That was the next step. I was going to come out and exchange with him and see how that went and then in the 2nd or 3rd round, if he started to get tired or I started to get tired, just take him down, grind on him and wear him out. It worked out in my favor. My last 2 fights have worked out that way. The thing is, and the thing I want people to understand is, I trained for a 25-minute fight. I'm ready to go at that pace for 25 minutes. I know it's just a 15-minute fight, but I believe in my heart that I'm going to be fighting for that championship pretty soon, so I train to fight for 5 rounds.
PC: I think the difference in your fight with him opposed to his fight with Urijah is that once you had him hurt, it was no coming back for him. How important was it for you not to let him recover and moreso not to get out of the round?
LG: That's something that I've had since my early career. I've never hurt somebody and have them come back. I think that's part of my Hispanic heritage man; that hot blood. I have that killer instinct. There are a lot of people that have it and a lot of people that don't. I'm not saying Urijah doesn't have it because he's finished a lot of people and he's an excellent athlete, but I think Urijah's athleticism has got him where he was at and not so much his killer instinct.
PC: You definitely seem to be coming into your own at 145. How comfortable are you feeling at this weight?
LG: I feel good. Without trying to act like one of these guys that ain't heavy for the weight class and stuff like that, it's not an easy cut. It's not a hard cut, but it's not an easy cut either. You know just like I know that cutting weight sucks man; whether it's 5 pounds or 20 pounds, it's hard to cut weight no matter what. I'm comfortable in this weight class and I have a lot of height on these guys at 145. I feel like my reach is a huge advantage.
PC: I saw you pause for a second as if you thought Jens was playing possum. Were you surprised you were able to hurt him so early?
LG: Yeah. I had to check his eyes for a second before I jumped on him because he wasn't all the way down. The thing that you learn with your sparring is if you get kind of tired or somebody does hurt you or something, you learn those little tricks. You bait them in and then you catch them with a big shot. I tried to make sure that he didn't have a clear head when I went in for it, but I seen his eyes man and they were rolling pretty good. He was kind of lost and didn't know what was going on. When I watched the video, I didn't know he had hit me until I watched it afterwards. He landed a left hook also and I think that it may not have slowed me down, but it made me think he may have been playing possum because he had just landed. When I seen him back up against the cage and I landed the other right hand, I knew he was gone.
PC: When I speak with a lot of fighters that just landed that big KO punch, they say they felt it in their hand. That wasn't the case for you?
LG: No, it wasn't. It was a glancing punch that I hit him with to be honest. You could see it on the replay. I didn't catch him flush like I did Takaya. I was able to get a good shot in there. I'm just excited to see what's going to happen in the next few fights. A lot of peopleÂ…you can never satisfy everybody, but I'm making some people happy.
PC: You're definitely becoming one of the more exciting fighters out there. If you look at the competition Jens has faced, from BJ Penn, Gomi and Faber, how does it feel to be the guy to put him away the quickest and dominate him?
LG: It feels great man. It's like you said, I actually thought about the long list of names that he foughtÂ…like I said man, I trained for the best Jens I could possibly train for. I gave him respect and he is what he was, but the way I trained for this fight, I knew this was going to be the outcome. I'm a believer in if you work hard in the gym, the fight should be easy and for this fight, I was actually looking forward to the fight. I'm still hungry as hell man. I want the title, but like I said, I'm willing to fight whoever. If a situation arises where they offer me a fight, I'm going to take it. I'm not going to sit here for Mike to get better and be the next person in line. I'd rather take the risk because when you're the champion, you don't have any options. You have to fight who they put in front of you and I want to get used to having that mentality.
PC: What was said between you and Jens after the fight?
LG: I told him that I had a lot of respect for him and that he was actually one of my favorite fighters coming up. He was exciting and he could scrap. I just feel like maybe it was a passing of the torch the right way. He got beat by Urijah, but Jens is an exciting fighter man. He knocks people out and he tries to put people away as fast as possible and I think he passed that fighting style to me. I don't think Jens is gone completely yet. I think he still has some good fights left in him, but I was the better man that night or I just landed first, but I think he still has some fight left in him. I let him know what I thought about him. It was real respectful and it was a good deal.
PC: Mike Brown said he would love to fight you if they could make that happen. What did you think of his performance against Urijah?
LG: It's weird, you know, because sometimes they could tell you in the buildup and you see certain things or, as a fighter, you could tell when things aren't going right. To be honest man, you could see it in Urijah that he didn't seem as confident as he normally does. He just didn't look the same to me man. I think he was beat before he went in. Not because he was scared of Mike or anything like that because I don't think he's afraid of anything, but the thing was, Mike Brown is a man. That boy can wrestle and he can box. I think Urijah may have felt outgunned in this fight. He didn't lay down by any means, but he went down pretty quick and pretty early. He really didn't try to do anything. I'm one of those guys you have to stick a fork in me, you know? It made me second-guess a lot of stuff about Urijah. However he feels about that fight is his own thing, but I could see it was a bad thing for him. If you watched Mike get ready, he just looked hungry. Maybe Urijah just needed something to light his fire again. We have our ups and downs as fighters man. Anybody is beatable. On any given night, we all can go, but when I'm in the gym, that's all I think about is that somebody is going to try and hit me with that big punch man; somebody is going to try and submit me. I try to prepare for it in the gym.
PC: "Cowboy" got a big win over "Razor" Rob on that same night. How do you feel about his performance?
LG: It was crazy man because they put me and "Cowboy" on the same card. He is my best friend man. I was sitting back watching his fight. I don't know if you had a chance to see it?
PC: No, I haven't seen it yet.
LG: It was a scrap man. If you think me and Roger got it on, you're going to trip out when you see this. The first few seconds in the fightÂ…it's bad when you get hit and don't see it coming, but "Cowboy" ran right into a "Razor" Rob right hand. He tried to do a switch hook and he switched his feet and shot himself forward and threw the hook and Rob just came right down the middle man and blasted him. That was in the first 30 seconds of the fight and he dropped "Cowboy." I was in the back and I didn't know what to do. I went numb and I started thinking about different things. When I saw him sprout back up, I knew because we had gotten ready for that. We had been fighting each other pretty hard in the gym. He fought through it and came back and put a shellacking on Rob. Watching fights like that always gets you pumped up. I don't know if I was ready to watch a fight like that before I went out for my own fight, but it helped motivate me and got me pumped up. He had won his fight so the pressure was on my shoulders to go out and deliver. It helped out a lot and I'm looking forward to being on a lot more cards with "Cowboy."
PC: I don't know if it's a Hispanic thing, but you and Miguel Torres are becoming 2 of my favorite fighters to watch. I look forward to your next fight. Is there anything you want to say in closing?
LG: (Laughing) I want to thank my whole camp; everybody out there at Jackson's. I have to thank my family, who stuck with me through hard times. They made the training possible for me and all of my sponsors: TapouT, Nutritox and Kill It Clothing. I want to thank you to Percy for taking the time to do this interview man.
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]