Josh Burkman Ready for Reiner

Justin Bolduc - Nokaut.com

Nokaut.com: This weekend you are fighting Chad Reiner at the UFC’s Ultimate Fight Night. How do you feel?

Josh Burkman: I feel good, I feel really good. I had a break for about four or five months now so I’m just excited to get in there and fight.

Nokaut: Yeah, we haven’t seen you in a long time. What have you been up to since your last fight?

JB: Well my last fight was against Josh Neer and I broke my nose in that fight. After I didn’t have it fixed right away, I went on a Team Punishment vacation to Costa Rica and I did some other stuff. So finally when I got home I had surgery, which was about three weeks later. When I got done with my surgery they called me up and asked if I wanted to fight again, I was like “hell yeah!” I was supposed to fight Josh Koscheck, so I got all my stuff and went back up to Big Bear- this was like two or three weeks after my surgery, and I was sparring. We were sparring light- Melvin [Guillard] and me were sparring, and we start off sparring light but we end up brawling half-way through [laughs]. He threw a big right hand, I didn’t have a headgear on and he hit me right in the nose, and my nose is still broken, and it just shattered my nose and shattered my septum. So I came home, needed to have surgery, and I ended up getting a staph infection. Just a lot of stuff happened over and over. So we had to have the staph infection taken care of, I had it for like a month and was in and out of the hospital. So we finally got that under control, I finally had my surgery, and the doc gave me the OK about a month and a half ago. That is what I’ve been doing man, just trying to get healthy.

Nokaut: What do you know about your upcoming opponent and what have you done to prepare for him?

JB: I know he is 13-1, and his one loss was a flask knockout, so anyone in this sport with thirteen wins and one loss is tough, because anything can happen. Obviously he has a high skill level and I know he has good jiu-jitsu, I’m sure he has good hands; at this point anyone who gets into the UFC is tough. You don’t hear a lot anymore that this guy is a great jiu-jitsu guy, this guy is a great boxing guy; pretty much everyone has good hands and a good ground game, and good conditioning. So I am preparing for this fight like he is the world champion. I’ve been doing that over the last month and I just think that as long as I continue to do what I am doing it doesn’t matter who I am in there with, Chad Reiner or whoever I fight next.

Nokaut: Perfect situation, how would you like to see the fight go?

JB: Perfect situation I come in, pick him up, slam him, and he’s out [laughs]. I lot of these guys think three five-minute rounds; they come out and train for three five-minute rounds. I don’t train like that. I train to end the fight as soon as possible. I am going to come out and try to end the fight as quick as possible. The one thing I have learned over the last few fights is that is not always going to happen, so when it doesn’t happen you have to back out and come back in and pace yourself. I think I have done that but my biggest thing is I don’t want this thing to go out of the first round, I don’t want it to go out of the first minute of the first round, and I am going to do everything I can to make sure that it doesn’t.

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