UFC 123 Media Call Highlights

Added on Nov 11, 2010 by John Petit in

UFC & MMA

The UFC 123 conference call was held today, and the Main and Co-Main Event fighters were on the line to field questions from the press. The event will be held on on November 20, 2010 at The Palace of Auburn Hills in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills, Michigan. This will be the first UFC event in the Metro Detroit area since UFC 9.

Even though 3 of the 4 fighters are coming off of losses these are highly rated fighters with a tremendous amount of cage experience. Matt Hughes is the only one coming in off a win, and is currently riding a 3 fight win streak. He is fighting BJ Penn, who is coming off of consecutive losses to Frankie Edgar in the lightweight division. BJ and Matt have fought twice already, and this will be the rubber match. Hughes said of the upcoming fight “I had a lot of obligations on the line. But one more paycheck this year will really make my wife pretty happy and get her off my back for spending some money. I was able to hold off on all the obligations. BJ and I are a lot alike. We’re split one and one and we finally get to have the rubber match.” Matt has been known for taking a lot of time off in between fights, but this year has remained pretty active. He concluded “I am liking the the activity. In the past I’ve been fighting then taking a long time off and then fighting again. This year’s been really good for me because I’ve stayed on track the whole time. I never really got out of shape. It’s been really good for my body just to stay in shape. I don’t spar every week if I don’t have a fight coming up or do heavy training. I’m 37 years old. I’m one of the older guys out there. And I gotta slow down a little bit with the training and train more smarter than train hard.”

BJ Penn is stepping up in weight classes after losing his lightweight title, and is really embracing the fact he has a fight coming up. He has said in the past that fighting is what keeps him going, but he reiterated it today. “I think what keeps me motivated is I don’t want to go in the bar and drink. There’s not much to do in Hilo. There’s nothing to do. I’d way rather be training to fight in the Octagon. I think once you’ve been where me, Lyoto, Rampage and Matt have been, a lot of other stuff, it just seems boring. This is the only thing that keeps me feeling like I have something to live for. As soon as Dana gave me that text, he said, you want to take a fight with Matt Hughes, I got chicken skin all over my body and I was like, I gotta a reason to live for a couple more months. I think fighters are just used to that adrenaline.” As far as how the transition back to welterweight has been going Penn said “I feel good. I feel like I haven’t missed a beat. I feel like it was just yesterday when I was fighting in the welterweights. So as far as that, nothing drastic. Just preparing for the legend. Preparing for Matt.” He explained “Coming off two losses I probably would have accepted anyone Dana offered me. But in offering Matt he kind of offered me a gift, because I always hoped me and Matt would do it again.”

Penn didn’t have a good reason on why he lost the two fights Edgar, but when he was asked what went wrong he said, “I think what went wrong was that I didn’t win those fights. But besides that I don’t know. I really don’t have much to say about that. All I can really do is step back and say that Edgar did a great job and he’s the champion right now. And I want to get back to the top of the lightweight division. And I want to be the champion again. And as far as changing my camp, yeah I think I train harder. I started running again and doing roadwork and trying to push my different energy systems and do a lot of things. That’s not the only reason why the fight went the way it did, you know you gotta improve at everything with your boxing and your takedowns and your wrestling. It is what it is.”

Lyoto didn’t have much to say in the conference call, and through his translator just said that this fight seems easier. He said there was a lot of pressure going into the fights with Shogun because he was undefeated, but now is much more relaxed. He feels there is a lot less pressure going into the fight with Rampage.

Quinton Rampage Jackson took some time off to film the A-Team movie before he fought bitter rival Rashad Evans. He talked a little about the differences when asked. He said “There’s lot of things different. I’ve been more focused and had a lot of time to train. When you take a long time off not training and stuff like that, you’re body goes into shock when you go into a hard camp. But this time my body’s doing good and this time I’m more prepared.” He was asked if the movie played a part in the loss to Evans, and he shunned the idea. “I know exactly the reason why I lost that fight. I knew I lost that fight before I even stepped foot in the cage. The day I lost that fight was a couple of weeks before that fight even started. It had nothing to do with the movie tour or anything.” Exactly what happened that day he wouldn’t go into, but said “Well I’d like to keep that personal, but you know, sometimes we fight even when we shouldn’t fight. Sometimes we should back out of fights. But the fight was so delayed and so well promoted, I felt I owed it to my fans to fight no matter what the outcome was.”

Apparently Basketball star Shaquille O’Neal was bad mouthing his role in the A-Team movie, and when he was asked what he thought about what Shaq said he commented “Don’t give a f—. I did my job and got paid, I don’t give a f— who saw the movie. I’m a fan of A-team, that’s why I did it. I don’t expect everybody else to be a fan of everything I’m a fan of. They can say what they want about anything, doesn’t bother me.”

Matt Hughes came to Rampage’s defense “I do want to say that I watched the A-Team and I loved it. And I thought Rampage did a great job in the movie. That’s coming straight from the heart too, Rampage. I walked into that theater not know what to expect, but when I walked out I had a smile on my face that said, that’s my buddy up there!”

The Pay Per View portion of the card looks like this.

UFC 123

Quinton Jackson vs. Lyoto Machida

Matt Hughes vs. B.J. Penn

Gerald Harris vs. Maiquel Falcão

Phil Davis vs. Tim Boetsch

George Sotiropoulos vs. Joe Lauzon