UFC Fighter Tim Kennedy Talks Wanting To Fight Anderson Silva, Thoughts On Bellator, UFC Embedded
- UFC have released the third episode of UFC 199 Embedded, which features Luke Rockhold, Michael Bisping, Dominick Cruz and Urijah Faber. The event takes place this Saturday with two big title fights. We'll have full, live coverage here on Wrestling Inc.
- UFC top ten middleweight Tim Kennedy was interviewed by the Two Man Power Trip Of Wrestling Podcast this week. You can see highlights below courtesy of Chad and John, and the full interview at this link.
Was he still hoping for a fight against Anderson Silva:
"I've been begging and pleading for a fight against Anderson Silva. One, it's an easy payday and he may have been the greatest ever but that went away the moment he tested positive for steroids. Had he like broken his leg during in his Weideman fight and just went quiet into the night I would say he is one of the best ever but now he's just another cheater and another Vitor Belfort and another Brazilian that I want to knock out. Both Silva and Belfort would be super-easy fights on the sauce or off the sauce but now the way we are being tested it is difficult to be able to cheat so that makes it really really easy fight."
Beating contenders in the past and being looked over for title shots:
"I've been out of it a second but yeah Robbie Lawler is the champ and I beat the breaks off Robbie Lawler for fifth-teen minuets. Yoel Romero they were saying is the number one contender..I knocked him out and then he didn't answer a third round bell. Michael Bisping we had a five round battle I beat him for five rounds and tripled the amount of strikes landed. I landed more take-downs in that fight then had been landed on him in his entire career. But one guy is a champ, the other guy is a contender and the other one gets a title fight? Then I see people had me ranked at like eight or nine? It just blows my mind. At what point did I just get forgotten and end up (sucking). Let me remind you that I have beaten every one of these dudes and I am still here."
Thoughts on Scott Coker and Bellator's formula:
"I love the guy. I love fighting for him, I love the way he treats his athletes. I love the way that even on the production side of what they would let us do. They would let us be ourselves and there wasn't this black and white mold of how we are supposed to act or what we are supposed to say or what we are supposed to wear. Fighting is a very independent thing and it's not a team sport and it's not the NFL you know because we don't have to look the same. We aren't going in there to rip a guys arm off and knock him out and in the UFC with our uniform policy, the no sponsors not only does it affect us monetarily but it changes and you have a bunch of robots in there. They want us to fight and they are giving us incentives to fight a certain way and it's taking the element of this being an individual Mixed Martial Arts exhibition to we are going to take one guy and another guy and let them do their thing to a really tacky product and I don't want to be tacky or I don't want to be a black and white mold of a product."
Does he see fighters eventually looking to jump ship from UFC rather then renaming a "black and white robot":
"I think it's close. I think guys are going to realize soon how much they are really worth and that's going to change what guys go after. If they know they are worth "this much" money well you can't help but pay them, so it kind of stinks that these athletes don't know how much they are worth yet. But they will figure it out."