Brad Pickett Says Fighting a Retiring Urijah Faber Has Worked to His Advantage

Brad Pickett spoke with MMAjunkie about his fight with Urijah Faber at UFC on FOX 22, which will be Faber’s retirement fight. Some highlights are below:

On Faber: “He’s a tough opponent. But people know me, and know I throw hard. Everyone knows how crazy this sport is. I just need to land one of my shots, and then he’s going to go to sleep. I’ll guarantee that. As for me now, I need to focus on landing some of my shots. Don’t get me wrong. Don’t sleep on my ground game. I do have really good submissions as well. I just don’t have the opportunity to show it too much. Some of my best submissions I never hit in a fight. I hit everyone in the gym, never hit in one fight. So people still don’t know about them yet.”

On Faber’s retirement working to his advantage: “All the eyes are on him; all the pressure on him. He’s in his hometown. I’ve been there before. He’s in his hometown. His phone is blowing up every two minutes. It’s just me, flying in from another country, no eyes on me, hardly any interviews. It’s all about me. He’s retiring. Throughout my camp, I was just having to concentrate on my camp, concentrate on getting better and preparing for him. Where he’s preparing for his retirement, preparing for this business, that business. He’s got a lot of focus on a lot of different areas while my focus has solely been on him.”

On his own eventual retirement: “I’d kind of like to do what (Faber) has done – where he’s retiring in his hometown. I would like to do that, get a good sending off. And I do know the UFC is going back to London in March, so that could be a possibility. I need to speak to people. But I don’t like to plan too much when I have such a big thing in front of me, as this Saturday, so I need to focus on that. And yeah, I’ve been thinking about a lot of things.”