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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
"I would never duck anybody in the whole world. Trust me, I'm not scared to fight anybody. The fact is, I can't train. I haven't been able to train for this fight and I'm not going to fight people one-handed. I'd fight Lorenz Larkin any day, trust me. In my mind, that's easy money. I want to fight... I'm not trying to push my way into UFC like this. I want money. I'm watching my bank account go down, and I want to build it back up, so as soon as I can, I want to start fighting.
It does piss me off. You're saying I’m mentally weak or something like that? When I have ever shown signs of mental weakness in any of my fights? He might be 13-0 but we all heard him crying in his fight against [King] Mo [Lawal] the fight before last. I heard moans and cries. There's no point in coming at me, telling me I'm mentally weak and I'm reluctant to fight you. The guy needs to know his place. I think I've proved myself over the years. I'm ready to throw down with anybody."
-Strikeforce Middleweight Champ Luke Rockhold fires back at Lorenz Larkin during an interview on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani, following a back and forth exchange on Twitter on Monday.
Penick's Analysis: Rockhold's showing little respect for Larkin, which will in turn garner a response, but this was facilitated by Strikeforce jumping the gun on announcing this fight. They had Larkin training for the fight under the auspices of it being signed, and had even announced the fight before tickets went on sale. That's poor business when Rockhold says he wasn't signed on for the fight and hadn't been training for it. This escalating beef is because of Strikeforce, yet it's now a fight that may not happen at all, because they'll enter the UFC likely in different spots in the pecking order later next year.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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