Author: Chuck Mindenhall

Though he hasn’t fought in nearly three years, one-time welterweight contender Dan Hardy isn’t quite done yet. In fact, he’s planning on putting himself through a training camp again.

As reported on UFC Tonight, the 33-year old British fighter is scheduling a full training camp for the end of this year. Hardy told Ariel Helwani that after the training camp he is planning on going through a battery medical testing to get cleared again to fight.

In 2013, as Hardy was getting ready to fight Matt Brown at UFC on FOX 7, he was diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, a genetic condition that the Mayo Clinic defines as “the presence of an extra, abnormal electrical pathway in the heart that leads to periods of a very fast heartbeat.”

Upon being diagnosed, Hardy opted not to have any medical procedures done, saying that the condition has never presented itself as a problem. Hardy has since been hired by the UFC as a commentator for European and Asian events.

In most cases, says the Mayo Clinic also says about Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, “the episodes of fast heartbeats aren’t life-threatening, but serious heart problems can occur.”

Hardy said he wanted to do a camp first because he wants to be back in fighting shape, and if all goes well he’ll determine when the right time to fight again will be.

At the time of the diagnosis, Hardy was riding a two-fight win streak, having scored victories over Duane Ludwig and Amir Sadollah. Before then he had lost four fights in a row, beginning with his title shot against Georges St-Pierre at UFC 111 in 2010.

Jorge Masvidal was doing very well as a lightweight, cruising to three wins in a row before he met Al Iaquinta at UFC Fight Night 63. In his mind — and in the mind of plenty of others — he won that fight, too. Yet two of the three judges gave the decision to Iaquinta, which prompted Masvidal to contemplate life as a fighter.

Namely, life at 155 pounds, which he swore off of that day in April after the scorecards were read.

During an appearance on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, the 30-year old Masvidal said his decision to move to welterweight had long been floating around in his head. But after the Iaquinta, one thing became clear to him: He was done competing as a lightweight.

“I did feel like [taking time off] initially, right after I was very upset,” he said. “But I definitely knew right then and there that I wasn’t going back to 55. I just wanted to compete and have fun and get as many fights as I could. I just knew exactly at that point that I wouldn’t go back to 55.”

Recently the USADA, the third-party agency heading the UFC’s new Anti-Doping Program, announced that IVs would be banned going forward. Many fighters, particularly wrestlers who’ve had to cut weight for years, rehydrate after weight cuts intravenously. The ban will take effect in October, allowing for a grace period for fighters.

That news also prompted Masvidal to head north to welterweight.

“I was definitely done with 155, then when I heard they ended up banning IVs I was like, there’s no way I can make 55,” he said. “I lose about 18 pounds the last two days [when competing at 155] of just straight water, so for me, to take the IVs away, there’s no way I could make 55. If it was…let’s say they just banned 170, that it was either 55 or 85, I’d go to 185 before I’d go to 55.

“I can’t. My body fat at 173 is five percent, so the rest is just straight water that I lose. I still got to get to 156, and I just ain’t got that much body fat at that weight.”

Masvidal (28-9), who trains out of American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Florida, said he’s heard rumblings from other fighters who don’t like the idea of IVs being banned.

“I’ve heard more complaining and bitching and stuff, I haven’t officially heard from guys that they are going to go up in weight,” he said. “But I have not heard, not one person who is happy about it. I just don’t understand, if what they can explain to us exactly why. They’re saying it’s because of steroids, that you can filter out the steroids with IVs and stuff, but, I mean, I don’t know. There has to be a way that we can get hydrated and keep it safe.”

Masvidal will face Cezar Ferreira in the co-main event at The Ultimate Fighter Finale 21 on July 12 in Las Vegas. It will be his 170-pound debut. It will also be Ferreira’s welterweight debut. “Mutante” is moving down from middleweight.

Asked if that set-up — a 155-pounder and a 185-pounder meeting in the middle – might be too much for him, Masvidal said he wasn’t overly concerned. 

“We’ll find out,” he said. “But I don’t think he’s going to be too anything for me. My speed, my reflexes and wrestling ability is just going to make for a great fight. I don’t think this guy can take me down. I haven’t seen too much tape of him or anything like that, but those 85ers are slow man compared to 55, especially somebody like me who’s on the faster side of the 55ers. So I don’t think there’s going to be any threat he has for me.”

While Masvidal has seven fights as a lightweight since defeating Justin Wilcox back in Strikeforce in 2012 — a stretch in which he went 5-2 —  he was already mulling a move to welterweight back then.

“I’ve been wanting to go to 170 for a long time,” he said. “After my [Gilbert] Melendez fight, in the Wilcox fight I had a real tough time cutting weight, and around that time I said, man, I want to go to 70. I run a tremendous amount of miles just to get down to the 70s, so I want to see how I perform if I don’t have to wear myself out so much the week of the fight, plus all the running I’m doing now.

“I just want to go out and compete. Plus the main thing is, at 55 I need a good amount of time to prepare just to make the weight cut. At 70 I can just take fights as they come and just compete as much as I want.”

Six years ago, at UFC 100, ESPN’s senior coordinating producer Glenn Jacobs decided to see what the fuss was about. It was that night he saw Georges St-Pierre overcome a groin tear to dominate Thiago Alves, and Brock Lesnar — the Sworded Thorax — avenge a loss to Frank Mir. That was also the night that Dan Henderson delivered the “H-bomb” on Michael Bisping, which turned him into a kind of modern day folk hero. All of this took place over drying pools of Mac Danzig’s blood…blood spilled by Jim Miller during some distant war on the prelims.

Though the sport of MMA was already being covered scantily on the digital side by then, in a roundabout way UFC 100 was the beginning of ESPN’s coverage. Jacobs traces his love of MMA back to July 11, 2009, when he went to a bar with some buddies and caught the action.

“It was obviously a big deal and we thought we should go see what it’s about,” Jacobs says. “And what most interested me at the time was sitting in the bar and listening to other fans talk about the sport. Because what I realized really quickly was that they were just sports fans. They were talking about technique; they were talking about strategy heading into the fight. If this guy does this, or if this guy does this, he can do this. It was the same conversation that sports fans have. To me it was sort of eye-opening at the time, and I thought, this is an area we should be at.”

By UFC 101 in Philadelphia, Jacobs was at the event in person with Jon Anik and the MMA Live crew. That was when Anik’s now-partner Florian fought B.J. Penn and Anderson Silva bewitched Forrest Griffin. By UFC 117, when Chael Sonnen put Silva on his back for four-and-a-half rounds before losing epically via triangle, Jacobs — along with MMA Live producer Kieren Portley, Zach Candito and a few others — had already long been thawing whatever preconceived notions about MMA existed at the top. By UFC 162, when Chris Weidman actually dethroned Anderson Silva, MMA was showing up on SportsCenter’s Top Ten regularly.

And by UFC 189, Jacobs — as well as ESPN — are savvy enough to know that putting Chael Sonnen in the Octagon with Conor McGregor is unique and compelling television. The game’s greatest trash-talkers just shooting the breeze, neither wearing socks with their dress shoes, in the middle of a cage? When you’re ESPN, anything is possible.

Yet it still feels a little novel to see an Octagon set up on the ESPN campus in Bristol. (Full disclosure: This from somebody who worked with ESPN from 2010-2013).

Though the UFC has moved into sectors of the mainstream with its seven-year FOX deal and its new alliance with Reebok, getting ESPN to cover the sport was a huge step to what MMA fans casually call “legitimacy.”

“I never feel like we legitimize anything,” Jacobs says. “I don’t feel like we’re that. I’m glad other people feel that way. I’m glad people care what we think, because that also helps me remain employed, which is great. But I don’t look at us that way. I think this sport for a long time has had great fans, and passionate fans. I think the UFC did a really good job of growing from what it was to where it is now.”

Where they are now is right in the middle of the “Conor McGregor Show.”  McGregor is appearing in Bristol at 7 a.m. on a Monday morning — which is 4 a.m. Vegas time, where he’s been training — just a dozen days before UFC 189. He doesn’t know on Monday if he’s fighting Jose Aldo or Chad Mendes, but he knows it will be one of them, and he knows he doesn’t care which. That attitude is familiar. That was also the attitude of Sonnen, who for a long while was the game’s most compelling, most polarizing figure. Sonnen’s now asking the questions of his Irish pay-per-view incarnate.

“Truth-talkers,” Sonnen corrects the producers when the word trash-talkers is mentioned, flashing a rack of white teeth. “I don’t talk trash. I talk the truth.”

Bruce Buffer announces them in the cage to signify the event before the event. Naturally, they kill the segments. First in athletic gear on the feet, demonstrating technique for fighting Aldo, then for Mendes. Later in suits, relaxing on chairs. These segments will air in the days leading up to the fight.

What’s funny is McGregor and Sonnen are a little standoffish with each other between takes. In an alpha sport, where Sonnen showed up out of nowhere and in a fit of transcendence demonstrated to the world how to sell PPVs, McGregor is the new king. There’s some pride in the silences.

Jacobs can’t stop smiling, though. The fight game loves its characters. Here he is throwing Sonnen (now an ESPN analyst) and McGregor (the game’s most audacious figure) in the cage together to do what they do sublimely.

That is, talk.

(ESPN)

THE OTHER OBVIOUS SIMILARITY is the willingness to fight. When Dan Henderson hurt himself just two weeks ahead of UFC 151, thus forcing him to back out of his light heavyweight fight with Jon Jones, it was Sonnen who volunteered to step in. Jones declined the offer (to great criticism), and the entire event was cancelled.

In that way, McGregor is cut from the Sonnen cloth. When he was told that an unconventional contingency plan was in play — that if Jose Aldo couldn’t go with his injured rib, then Chad Mendes would step in — he didn’t balk. His coach John Kavanagh said that when he informed McGregor of the idea that the Irishman said, “It doesn’t matter to me, they’re all the same.” That’s a hell of a thing for a man with so much to lose to be whimsical about.

“And that’s exactly word for word how it went down,” McGregor says. “I was asleep, he came in, woke me up, said it’s looking like Chad now for the interim. I opened one eye, I said they’re all the same, get out of my room, it’s not time to get up yet, and then I went back to sleep. They are all the same to me, it makes no difference.”

He says this after a wardrobe change. McGregor is now wearing an aqua blue suit with his name stitched to match his signature inside the breast. He is in his element now. Tight, tailored, dapper. After fighting, he says he wouldn’t mind showing up in the world of fashion. One ESPN employee mumbles, “anybody else in that suit you might think, what a douche!” But with McGregor, here’s a figure that’s all beard and sharp angles, his suit just an outward extension of his charisma. This is how he’ll appear with Sonnen on SportsCenter as the fight approaches.

The idea of fighting either a 5-foot-6 power wrestler (with a wicked overhand) or a rangy Muay Thai striker (with fallback jiu-jitsu) could not seem more different.

At least to people on the outside who aren’t the ones carrying a spotlight.

“Listen, it does…not…matter,” McGregor insists. “Of course we want Jose, it should be Jose. There’s no reason. I don’t understand why it’s a question. But, if pussies be pussies, what can I do? I will demolish Chad as well. It makes no difference to me. But we want what we traveled the world for.”

McGregor says he’s ultimately fighting McGregor on July 11 — and that, don’t forget, we’re dealing in the “The McGregor Show.” Still, making Aldo and Mendes indistinguishable might seem not only delusional but careless. 

Yet here’s Sonnen, who can simplify an opponent switch with the best of them, echoing McGregor. He says contemplating Aldo on the one hand and Mendes on the other is not the long division that “analysts” make it out to be.

“It’s not,” Sonnen says. “These are all talking points. The myths around fighting…I mean, I’ve done interviews before for an hour on a guy’s footwork. You know what that means? That’s how a guy’s feet move. It’s ridiculous. Or his ‘length,’ or ‘the size advantage.’ Muhammad Ali, the greatest of all time, 198 pounds in his prime. Mike Tyson, the next best, 220 pounds in his prime, never had a reach advantage. None of these things are real, but you deal with people and you just play along and go, ‘oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh right, totally different body types, yes, that’s a big deal!’”

They don’t chat when they’re not taping. McGregor has his girlfriend with him, and a small entourage of ESPN people. Sonnen rolls solo. He sits off to the side until it’s time to tape. He mentions he hates waiting around.   

“You get yourself ready, you walk out there, and you fight,” Sonnen says. “And that’s it. Conor’s bringing that refreshing attitude. It shouldn’t make a difference. You train hard on your skills and you go out there and fight. What are you proposing if you talk about an opponent change, that you’re going to go into camp and think about the opponent? What’s that have to do with you? You’re out there running the miles, you’re lifting your weights, you’re punching the bag, what’s that got to do with who the opponent is?”

As always with Sonnen, there’s the stage, the curtain and what’s behind the curtain, all being revealed at once. 

“These are talking points,” he says. “I’ll do a piece right here, at ESPN, and we’ll kill it in the ratings, and it’ll get everybody thinking. And you’ll see the betting lines change when I’m done, but the reality is it doesn’t make a bit of difference. You walk out there, you punch the other guy. It doesn’t matter if you’re confident about it or not. You go punch the other guy and try not to get punched, that’s the name of the game.”

That’s not dissimilar to how McGregor looks at things. It’s why some people feel like Sonnen handed McGregor the baton.

“The Chael comparison is one I’ve been getting a lot,” McGregor says. “But I’ve been getting compared to everybody in the game at some stage. I’ve been compared to people outside the game…Muhammad Ali, Bruce Lee, I’ve been compared to everybody involved in combat sport. So, it’s normal for me. People look to compare and familiarize themselves with people they are familiar with. It’s normal.

“But this,” he says, looking around. “This is unusual, sitting in an Octagon at ESPN. As the game grows, so does the media I suppose.”

Sonnen likes McGregor’s accessibility on the microphone. And he can empathize with McGregor, who will later head to New York for the Reebok unveiling, then back to California for a spot on Conan O’Brien, then —  if he’s successful on July 11 — to a longer line of commitments that one day will end. McGregor, like Sonnen, carries the burden of a salesman everywhere he goes.

“Your only reward for doing a bunch of interviews and being nice to work with is you get to do a whole bunch more interviews,” Sonnen says. “That’s the payoff. From a business side, when you’re both trying to draw revenue and you’ve got a dance partner that’s sitting one out, it’s annoying.

“I had those same things with Anderson Silva. If he would have met me a quarter of the way, a tenth of the way, what could have been…but that’s just the way it goes. You can’t force these guys to participate in their own business, in their own futures. You can’t force them to.”

McGregor says he liked the way Sonnen handled himself in the hype game.

“I certainly purchased the pay-per-views, I certainly purchased the event,” McGregor says. “When he showed up to fight people were interested. I see the similarities, but we fight a lot differently. We are not the same martial artist. But his ability to trash-talk about, get under his opponent’s skin was second to none.”

It’s true. Sonnen is more like Chad Mendes in this scenario — a wrestler who doesn’t mind telegraphing his every intention. And of course there are other things that differentiate the two. Sonnen, now retired, is out of the game after testing positive for myriad banned substances. He’s in a new stage of life. He came close to winning UFC gold, but then again, he was always so far away.

His time was then. McGregor’s is now.

“I enjoy Conor,” Sonnen says, in between takes. “He’s a very nice guy when you visit with him. You can talk to him about anything. He treats people well. He seems to be enjoying this ride, and I think he’s cognizant that it doesn’t last forever, so to make the most of it.”

Again that ornery smile breaks over Sonnen’s face.

“I’d like to see him hang on to a little more of his money,” he says. “I’m not sure in 10 years that financially this story ends well. But, he’s building some good memories. He’s said so himself. He’s fun.”

When asked about his spending sprees, which he has boasted about in the past as a way to “stay hungry,” McGregor juts his foot out.

“Look at them shoes,” he says. “What animal do you think they are from?”

They are black and gold and delicate looking; they make his ankles appear dainty.

“They’re caiman,” he says. “You know, the crocodile? Louis Vuitton.”

He’s getting pay-per-view points and he’s got the country of Ireland on his back, a date at Croke Park in Ireland hanging in his future, a Reebok deal, world tours, commercials, private planes, and hotel rooms with views of not only cities but of everything that lies before him.

“I do like spending money,” he says. “But I’m being sensible. I am intelligent. I am not an idiot.”

*

UFC 189 HAPPENS EXACTLY six years to the day after UFC 100. Back then, when Jacobs first caught wind, it was Brock Lesnar and GSP. In between it was Chael Sonnen. These days it’s Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor. Everything about this sport is an evolution.

Two days after Sonnen and McGregor taped their segments in Bristol, McGregor appeared on SportsCenter with Dana White from Los Angeles to announce that Aldo was out, and that Mendes was in. Because it’s McGregor, the event didn’t lose its luster. It merely gained a different kind.

“It’s the McGregor show,” McGregor said all along. “People are showing up for McGregor. People are buying the pay-per-view for McGregor. So, McGregor carries on like a professional and McGregor will be there July 10 and he will raise gold on July 11.”

Should he beat Mendes, and carry the interim title into a fight with Aldo, would that make him the UFC’s biggest star? We’re sitting at ESPN, where an Octagon has been brought in from New York, and Chael Sonnen has been flown in from Oregon, and Bruce Buffer from California, just to tape a couple of quick segments with the man they call “Notorious.”

“It’s so hard to say,” Jacobs says, contemplating the UFC’s top stars like he would a SportsCenter Top Ten. “Because Ronda [Rousey] is so incredible, and so much bigger than the sport itself.

“The only other person I’d even consider in that category is if Jon [Jones] ever gets it together again. Obviously a Jon Jones return will be an incredible event. To me, it would be Ronda and Conor at one and two, and I’d have to really think about what order I’d put them in, but I’d put them at one and two.”

Though Chad Mendes only received official word that he’ll be facing Conor McGregor for the featherweight interim title on Tuesday evening, he’s already mentally playing out what’s going to happen on July 11.

And reiterating what he said on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, the division’s No. 1 contender said during Wednesday’s UFC 189 media call that he won’t let emotion dictate how he performs. Even if McGregor lit a fire under Mendes last fall by insulting him during a spot on BT Sport just before his rematch with current champion Jose Aldo at UFC 179.

McGregor has also disparaged Mendes for his height (he is 5-foot-6) and for being a career runner-up. Yet asked what specific thing it was that created the bad blood between he and McGregor on Wednesday, Mendes said it all goes back to that episode ahead of the Aldo fight, which caught him unawares.

“I mean, the short sh*t, I don’t give a sh*t about that kind of stuff, I’ve been short my whole life,” Mendes said. “But, for me it was we had to do an interview right before my Aldo fight and he was talking about putting balls on my head and just being very unprofessional. This is something that, that made it personal. And for me, you don’t f*cking do that. This is the fight game, where somebody could get seriously injured, and that’s what I’m looking to do when I get in there against Conor McGregor.”

It was made official by UFC president Dana White that Jose Aldo would be out of the fight on Tuesday night during an appearance on SportsCenter. During the spot, McGregor was asked how quickly he would finish the wrestler Mendes. The Irishman declared that by the four-minute mark of the first round, Mendes would be unconscious.

He said the same thing during Wednesday’s press call.

When Mendes was presented the same question, he said McGregor wouldn’t last the fight.

“Yeah, Conor I’m going to give you a little more respect buddy,” he said. “I’m going to finish you within the first three.”

The two argued with each other sporadically throughout the call. When asked how his striking would hold up against McGregor, Mendes said that his stand-up was just part of the tool-set that would ultimately doom arguably the UFC’s biggest star.

“I think my striking is going to be great,” he said. “Conor’s never faced anybody like me before. I have the athleticism, the strength, the power, the speed, and I have wrestling to put him on his back to finish this fight. This fight is mine.”

Somehow, even with a five-fight losing streak and the proverbial writing showing up all over the wall, you knew Josh Koscheck wasn’t going to just put his shoes back on and walk away from fighting. Koscheck came into public consciousness sort of dressed as a troll (and still sporting his Edinboro singlet attitude-wise) during his stint on the original Ultimate Fighter.

And he’s still trolling at 37 years old. Perceptively, anyway.

Koscheck calls it business. He signed a contract with Bellator last week and then started seeing the full circle poetry of the moment. Koscheck began his career on Spike TV a decade ago, and now in the twilight he re-enters the space. He believes, against popular opinion, that there’s a lot more cagework left in him to do. And besides, there’s “P*ssy Boy Paul Daley” hovering around out there on the Bellator plains. That’s a piece of unfinished business that’s good enough to turn his pupils into dollar signs.

What am I talking about? Here. Let me get out of the way and have Koscheck himself tell you, in the only way he can — which is to say without a filter, and in the third person.

“These fighters today bitch and complain about money, and bitch and complain about the Reebok deal, but they don’t want to stick together and do anything,” he says. “It’s like, hey, fight your contract out and see what your market value is. That’s how all this came about.

“I just said, hey Bob [Cook], I’m interested in fighting again, let’s see what we can get. And Bob Cook and DeWayne Zinkin at Zinkin Entertainment contacted Scott [Coker] after our time was up and we started negotiating. Scott put an offer up on the table that we couldn’t refuse, and we posed it to the UFC and they couldn’t match it, and here Josh Koscheck is signed with Bellator, back on Spike TV again. Right where my career started. And if it wasn’t for Spike TV, there is no UFC. Everybody needs to remember that.”

Koscheck cackled back in the day when he soaked a drunk Chris Leben with a hose as he slept off his rounds on the front lawn. That was how it began. He also beat Leben on Episode Six, and then Chris Sanford officially in the Finale. After that he went 14-5 in the UFC before the recent skid, including two bouts against longtime champ Georges St-Pierre, one of them for the title. It was a hell of a run until a split-decision loss against Johny Hendricks in May 2012 sort of set the spiral in motion.

Since that time, Koscheck has been finished four times in a row — twice by knockout, twice by submission. In his last fight, against Erick Silva, he was choked out somewhat unceremoniously in the first round. That came just three weeks after Jake Ellenberger finished him with a north-south choke.

“I went down there [against Silva] and made a mistake and got caught,” he says. “That’s part of mixed martial arts. So, you know, it what it is. Everybody’s going to be all, ‘Kos should retire,’ I’ll hear it all.

“But let me be the judge and say when it’s time, and let me close people around me be the judge and say that I should retire. I have good people around me, and Bob Cook and DeWayne Zinkin believe in me. And now Scott Coker and Spike TV believe in me. Now Bellator believes in me. It’s just a snowball effect. I’ve got good people around me, and I’ll be the one to decide when I should retire.”

As far as Koscheck’s concerned, everything that stood before his signing with Bellator belongs to the ether. Including him retiring Matt Hughes at UFC 135, and him absolutely flattening Yoshiyuki Yoshida with right hands at that Fight for the Troops card back in 2008. He says all of it, the good and the bad…it’s all ground zero now.

“I think I’m at 0-0 again as a record,” he says. “I haven’t won and I haven’t lost yet. This is all new to me, as it was for you guys who were all shocked that I signed with Bellator. It’s all new to me as well. It’s going to be an exciting opportunity for me to start my career over at 37 years old, and just erase what happened 10 or 15 or however many fights I had in the UFC, and just start fresh. I haven’t been this excited since the Ultimate Fighter days.”

One memory that stubbornly remains is that of Paul Daley. At UFC 113 in Montreal, after Koscheck rendered Daley helpless for three rounds by keeping him on his back, Daley took a swing at the game’s great provocateur after the bell. That incident got Daley banished from the UFC. And the bad blood between the two now dovetails nicely to the Bellator stage, which of late has been all about housing unresolved vendettas (see Shamrock versus Kimbo).

In fact, Daley is the only welterweight on roster Koscheck can legitimately say he knows anything about.

“There’s only one that I know of over there, and his name’s ‘P*ssy Boy Paul Daley,’” Koscheck says, the goading rising in his voice. “I just want to bitch slap him because, the last time we fought in Montreal, for 15 minutes I held him down and beat him up, had his back, choked him, picked him up and slammed him. You know, we were talking trash the entire fight. Like, at one point I’m on top of him whispering in his ear, ‘you can’t get up boy,’ and he said, ‘let me up and fight me like a man.’

“I didn’t know there were certain rules in mixed martial arts where you have to let them up to fight them like a man. His new nickname for me from here on out is “Pussy Boy.” We’ve had this little beef, and we’ve been talking shit to each other on Facebook quite a bit. We don’t like each other. It’s funny that we’re going to get a chance to settle the score again inside the Bellator cage.

Koscheck has been on record for the last decade talking about being a businessman. As a product of the American Kickboxing Academy, he opened his own facility in Fresno back in 2010. At that time, he was driving a 2007 Ferrari F430 Spider coupé. He was appearing in music videos for bands named after classic automobiles. He was investing in many directions, and closing in on a title shot.

Nothing has changed except for most everything in 2015.

Yet even with five straight losses and a chorus of people calling for him to retire, he still knows his own name value because he went out and discovered it.

“My first thing was fighting out my UFC contract, because I’m a business man, and what it comes down to at the end of the day it’s about dollars and sense,” he says. “I knew the only way to see what my true market value is was to fight my contract out. I would suggest that all fighters fight their contracts out. That’s my opinion. In my opinion you’ve got to fight your contracts out to see what your value is. The reason Gilbert Melendez got paid? He fought his contract out. He was a free agent, and he negotiated. That’s the smartest thing these fighters can do.”

Now Koscheck is back. Or, Koscheck is still around, as the case may be, because he never really went away. He’s just going back home under a new set of circumstances, with a circular cage instead of one with eight sides, on familiar airwaves.

“Spike TV is the godfather when it comes to mixed martial arts,” he says. “Just to get the chance to see [Spike TV’s president] Kevin Kay and Scott Coker inside the cage, getting ready to kick someone’s ass…I’m so excited.”

As Jose Aldo tried to battle through a rib injury ahead of his title defense against Conor McGregor at UFC 189, the contingency plan — Chad Mendes — began preparing himself as if Aldo were already out.

On Tuesday, as UFC president announced on SportsCenter, that became a reality. In what was one of the stranger situations heading into a big pay-per-view event, Mendes will now step in and fight McGregor for the interim featherweight title on July 11.

His leap of faith paid off.  

“As soon as I got this call and they said get ready I basically just shut out any possibility that Aldo was coming back,” Mendes said during an appearance on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, a full day before he got the news. “I’m basically treating this like I’m fighting Conor for the title. I have to get my weight down. I’m coming up with a game plan and going over it, fine-tuning cardio. I’m pretending like I’m getting in there, and I’m fighting. That’s my mindset. I wake up every morning, I sit there and game plan stuff while I’m laying in bed before I get out.”

“And I’m excited, man. I think this is a great match-up for me. Conor’s a tough guy, but Conor’s a guy I know I can beat. He better pray that Aldo can go in there and fight because I’m going to mess that dude up.”

Mendes said that part of the reason he was confident about stepping in was that he keeps himself in fight shape year-round. As of Monday he was walking around 163 to 164 pounds — close to the weight he’s usually at two weeks before a fight.

Even when he was still uncertain as to whether or not he’d be facing McGregor at UFC 189, Mendes said he felt fortunate for the opportunity. Mendes was deadlocked with fellow featherweight Frankie Edgar to get the next shot, and he wasn’t promised the winner should Aldo have fought McGregor as planned. To get the opportunity ahead of Edgar did make him feel for the former lightweight champ.

“I feel for him,” he said of Edgar, who is coming off a victory over Mendes’ teammate Urijah Faber. “I have nothing against Frankie. Me and Frankie are right there in the same spot. Ultimately that was up to the UFC. Obviously I feel very honored that they chose me, but yeah, I feel like Frankie could make a case just as much as I could.”

Mendes, who is coming off a huge TKO victory of his own over Ricardo Lamas in April, said that he’s been watching McGregor going back to his UFC debut against Marcus Brimage in 2013. Though this was an opportunity he said he couldn’t refuse, Mendes was very surprised that McGregor agreed to fight him — a 5-foot-6 wrestler — when the UFC came to him with the alternative plan.

“[McGregor] just went through an entire training camp for a guy that’s a Muay Thai fighter, and now he’s facing a guy that’s going to put him on his back,” Mendes said. “It definitely changes the whole game plan but, I just heard his coach [John Kavanagh] talking. This is a fight that a lot of people from Ireland are coming to see, taking out big loans and stuff. So it would be pretty messed up on his part to have to back out now with all his friends and family coming. There’s a lot of pressure on that, a lot riding on him to keep that fight going. So I don’t think he has a choice.”

As one of McGregor’s frequent targets in the media, Mendes and McGregor have had a contentious history together. Yet asked if the fight was personal to him, Mendes said he would present a stoical face once he stepped inside the Octagon.

“He’s definitely said things to make this personal…the guy just loves talking crap, though, I mean, that’s Conor,” he said. “He’s an actor, he’s a guy that’s selling fights. I’m not going to get in there and fight emotionally. I’m going to love to beat the crap out of this guy, don’t get me wrong, but there’s nothing that dude’s going to say to take me out of my game, push me too far or make me fight emotionally. I’m going to get in there and do what I do every single time. I’m going to put the pace on him, I’m going to put him on his back and I’m going to make him uncomfortable and I’m going to beat the crap out of him. Bottom line is this is what I was born to do, and it’s time.”

As for how he foresees beating the Irish firebrand McGregor, Mendes said it could go a variety of ways.

“If I could go out there and knock this dude out, I definitely think that’s a possibility,” he said. “He takes a lot of punches in fights and comes in with his hands down a lot and he gets cocky in there a little bit. I feel like I have the power and the speed to put this guy out. If not I can see myself taking this dude out by taking him down and submitting him. I’ve seen past fights where he’s lost, got submitted. The guy, he’ll tap. He’s got that give up, that quit in him. And I’m really going to test that in this fight. And if not either of those two [outcomes] I’d be more than happy to go five rounds of putting this dude on his back, beating a hole in his face the whole time. Any of the three sounds good to me.”