Filed under: UFC
When Josh Koscheck first heard that there might be an opportunity to finally get a fight with former UFC welterweight champ Matt Hughes after he’d long since given up lobbying for it, he didn’t have to think too hard about his answer.
“Diego Sanchez broke his hand and I eventually got a phone call from [manager] ‘Crazy’ Bob Cook and he’s like, ‘Hey, you want to fight Matt Hughes?'” Koscheck said on Monday’s UFC 135 media call. “I didn’t even hesitate. I was like, when are we fighting him?”
What Koscheck didn’t realize, he said, was that this was a late replacement fight. He’d been “so out of the loop” after coming back from a long layoff following an eye injury he suffered against Georges St-Pierre that he didn’t realize Hughes was supposed to fight Sanchez on September 24 in Denver, so he wasn’t expecting to hear Cook tell him that the bout was just three weeks away.
But, Koscheck said, he’d taken enough time off already. For the man who considers himself “always two or three weeks away from being ready to fight,” it was an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“I was like, yep, let’s do it,” Koscheck said. “I’m in shape, let’s go. I didn’t hesitate to take the fight.”
Koscheck hasn’t set foot in the Octagon since losing a unanimous decision to St-Pierre in their five-round title fight at UFC 124. He suffered a broken orbital bone in that fight, thanks to an early jab from GSP, and the pain was even worse than when he’d accidentally severed his own toe at four years of age while “doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing with a hatchet,” Koscheck said.
The pain of that experience “didn’t compare to the eye injury,” according to Koscheck, who added that he “got through it via pain pills and morphine that night.”
“It was a fun experience, needless to say, that I don’t want to go through ever again,” he quipped.
That was a little over nine months ago, but Koscheck could have come back sooner, he said. He took a little extra time off to “focus on some other areas outside of fighting,” and was planning to return at UFC 139 in San Jose, possibly at middleweight in a rematch with Chris Leben or even a bout against recent Leben knockout victim Wanderlei Silva.
“I was just looking for a big fight, and things happen for a reason,” he said. “I texted Dana White the day of all the confusion with Diego breaking his hand and I said hey, it’s your favorite son, Kos. Make sure I get that fight with Matt Hughes.”
White did just that, apparently. After Hughes agreed to it, the fight that Koscheck had given up on was finally his, albeit after a long layoff from the sport and a short training camp to prepare.
If the timing is of any concern to Koscheck, however, you sure wouldn’t know it.
“Fighting Matt Hughes is a good comeback fight for me,” he said. “I think the fans deserved this fight a long time ago, and now we’re getting the opportunity to do it.”
Better late than never, perhaps. And after what he went through following the GSP fight — not to mention the vague horror of the hatchet incident — how much can there really be left for him to fear?