(Can Matt Brown keep rolling through the division’s elite? / Photo via Getty)
By Elias Cepeda
Since the beginning of 2012, UFC welterweight Matt Brown has won six consecutive fights, all but one by KO/TKO within the first two rounds. His most recent was a startlingly fast and violent knockout of the previously red-hot Mike Pyle in under thirty seconds this past Saturday at UFC Fight Night 26.
All of a sudden, Brown is more than a tough and exciting fighter — he’s the owner of the most impressive win streak in the division outside of Georges St. Pierre and Johny Hendricks, who meet one another with GSP’s title on the line in November.
Brown has been calling out the champion and, well, now it makes sense. CagePotato spoke with the contender Sunday while he celebrated with family far away from the lights that shone on him kindly in Boston during his latest victory.
“It’s weird, man,” Brown muses while sitting with kids playing and shouting around him. “Obviously, I’m real happy with the result but I do feel a little unfulfilled. It wasn’t the type of fight I prepared for at all. But you take what you can get, right?”
Brown says he is “completely healthy” after the quick fight with Pyle but isn’t sure what his next step will be on his path towards the welterweight championship. “I don’t know what is coming next,” he says when I ask him if he’ll pursue another fight before the November title fight between St. Pierre and Hendricks, or attempt to wait it out and ask for a title fight for his next one.
“We haven’t really talked about that yet. We are just trying to enjoy the moment for a bit. The goal is the title but I don’t really care how we get there. I’m not thinking about that.”
Brown doesn’t seem to read too much into how particularly fast he dispatched of Pyle, who himself was riding a four fight win-streak before running into his former training partner Saturday. “I would probably feel even more confident if it was a longer fight,” Brown confesses.
“Anyone can get caught like that in a short fight.”
Such humility seems contrary in a man who, at the UFC Fight Night 26 post-event presser said that he was in it to do one thing – kick St. Pierre’s ass. But Brown says that his calling out St. Pierre is not a calculated move to make sure he isn’t overlooked.
“It is completely natural,” he says. “He’s the champ and winning the title is why I do this.”