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Kenny Florian can smell another crack at the UFC lightweight championship, but he realizes he must go through Joe Stevenson first.
Florian will carry a five-fight winning streak into his showdown with Stevenson at UFC 91 this Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. A battle between two former title challengers, the bout figures to solidify the victor as the No. 1 contender for UFC lightweight champion B.J. Penn’s belt.
“It’s definitely a big, big fight,” Florian told Sherdog.com in an exclusive video interview. “He’s one of the best fighters out there, I believe. That’s exactly what I wanted. I didn’t want to go out there and just fight anybody. If I was going to fight before a title fight, I wanted it to be against a guy like Joe Stevenson.”
The 32-year-old Florian (10-3) cemented his status as a top contender at 155 pounds when he outpointed the red-hot Roger Huerta at UFC 87 in August. The defeat snapped a 12-fight winning streak for Huerta, who had not been beaten in more than four years.
A Mark DellaGrotte protégé, Florian failed in his bid to capture the UFC lightweight crown in October 2006 when he dropped a unanimous decision to Sean Sherk in a five-round war of attrition at UFC 64. The loss deepened his hunger.
“You don’t realize how bad you want it until you lose an opportunity like that,” Florian said. “Leaving that fight, it hurt a lot. It hurt so bad that I was so close and wasn’t able to get it. All the training I did wasn’t enough. I really became a professional fighter after that fight. Going forward, I’m not going to let that opportunity pass me by now.”
The road to another shot at UFC gold runs through Stevenson (29-8), a former welterweight and a veteran of 37 fights. The 26-year-old rebounded from his bloody UFC 80 tapout loss to Penn with a submission victory against American Top Team’s Gleison Tibau in July.
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