Strikeforce light-heavyweight champion "King Mo" Lawal spoke with MMAForReal.com's Matt Bishop and Forrest Lynn on Lights Out Radio earlier this week to preview his fight with Rafael Feijao and to talk about his game, the dreaded lactic acid buildup, Chael Sonnen's wrestling ability ("the best in the UFC") and so much more.
On going five rounds and facing adversity:
There's no true way to prepare for five rounds except doing it. You can train all you want. I trained five rounds for Mousasi and I went out there fighting like it was a three-round fight right away. The thing is mentally, I had the mental fortitude to push through it. I don't know if he has that. We'll see. We'll see what happens. If it's going to be a one-round fight, it's going to be a one-round fight. If it's going to be a five-round fight, it's going to be a five-round fight, but in all scenarios, I'm going to win.
On lactic acid buildup and those questioning Shane Carwin:
Lactic acid feels like you're a skinny person trapped in an obese person's body. Your body is aching, you can't move. It's hard to explain. You can't move, you feel heavy. There was one point that the lactic acid was so hard that I tried to punch Mousasi, I was cocking back and I was punching and it felt like I was slapping him. It makes you feel weak, you can't move, you have no explosiveness. It feels like a full-body cramp just about.
I was like, 'What the hell do they know?' A lot of those people talking about Carwin, they aren't even training. If fighting's so easy and all those people are talking about Carwin, then maybe those motherf---ers should go out there and start training, find a gym, go through medicals and turn pro and start fighting if it's that easy to start fighting and what Shane Carwin did was so bad. It was Shane Carwin's first time in a big event like that and when you get that adrenaline dump, you dump everything and the lactic acid just builds up. It's like you're maxing out. Picture yourself maxing out like 10 times. That's what it feels like. You're maxing out as much as you can doing bench presses or squats, heavy squats and maxing out. You're maxing out 10 times and that's what it feels like. You can't go any more.
On fighters like Jon Jones and Phil Davis getting more hype than him, despite him being a world champion:
The only people that believe all that hype is groupies. I don't care what people say because eventually they'll have to respect me. I wish they had open contracts so I could give those boys losses, but it's whatever, man. The truth will come to light and people can believe what they want to believe, but the truth always comes. Popular belief isn't always right. Popular belief for the most part is wrong. The world was flat. Everyone believed that then someone came and said the world was round and that was unpopular but it came to be fact. Popular belief isn't anything. Eventually people are going to have to respect me. I'm just going to go out there and do what I have to do to win and try to be impressive, and we'll see what happens from there.
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