It has been a whirlwind year for Brian Foster. He had just come off a win over Matt Brown at UFC 123 last November and riding a two-fight win streak. He was looking to make his mark in 2011. He was scheduled to be on UFC 129 in April against Sean Pierson on what was being dubbed the biggest card in UFC history. Then a brain hemorrhage was found after a routine pre-fight exam before his fight with Pierson.
“I was supposed to fight Sean Pierson and I trained my ass off,” Foster told me. “I trained harder than I ever had. I had some good momentum built up. I was just feeling great. . I was just headstrong about everything. I just had one of the baddest workouts I did the whole camp. Marc Fiore (Foster’s trainer and manager) is on the phone and I can tell on his face he wasn’t too happy about something apparently. He told me they (UFC) just pulled you off the card because they found a brain hemorrhage. It’s like the smallest kind. Like a blood vessel that bursts into four heads. It got made out to be a really big deal. They (UFC) pulled me off the card and a lot of people wrote me off saying I was done, said I should quit and all this and that and I’m not that guy.”
A lot of people were wondering when Foster would return from this serious injury. Foster describes what the UFC told him he needed to do to be cleared and why he felt like he may not return.
“It’s the same with any organization. It’s all about safety. They want to take care of their fighters. They don’t want anything to happen to any of their fighters. All of a sudden, they don’t want you to be a liability to them. MMA already has got a bad rap. There are a few deaths already. People tend to take stuff internally pretty seriously. They wanted to look after me. They wanted me to see the best doctors. They wanted to make sure I was 100 percent and was good to compete. There are some stuff up in the air with them. I know they are a big organization, never had any injuries like this. I think the biggest thing, it got so blown out of proportion when we first came out about it. It scared them. I became more of a liability to them, and they don’t want me fighting under their banner knowing I could undergo a serious injury. I fully understand.”
All Foster wanted to do was to fight and it didn’t matter who it was and made it clear he didn’t want to be released from the UFC.
“I didn’t want to be released. I’m not that guy. I want to fight the best in the world. I am a fighter. I’m a fighter to the fullest. I want to fight the best in the world. I don’t give a damn. I’ll fight GSP this weekend, I don’t give a damn. That’s just who I am. They (UFC) made me wait seven months when they medically released me. Then eight, nine months into scheduling a fight and start training and stuff.”
After some back and forth with UFC officials and with them not sure if they were going to bring him back, Foster and Bellator agreed to a deal during the weekend of UFC 137. Foster is excited to be in Bellator as their welterweight division is widely considered their best division.
“It’s the most stacked division. The UFC’s most stacked division in my mind is the lightweight division and their welterweight division is topnotch too. I think I ride the wave with some of the guys in the Bellator welterweight tournament. A couple of them could break the Top 10 as well as I. So I think I fit in there perfectly. I think it’s going to be some hell of a matchup, hard-fought fights and I’m excited. I’m tickled to death to be a part of it and jumping into it with some guys dying to mix it up.”
You can listen to the entire interview here.
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