For those who may not know, can you start with giving us a little bit of background on how you got involved in the world of mixed martial arts and how it all started for you?

It started actually about a year and a half ago.  I just retired from international wrestling, freestyle wrestling, and one of my coaches at Ohio State, Rex Holman, who was a good friend of mine at the time in helping me with my international career. He was pretty convinced he was gonna give MMA a try and I was helping him train just from a wrestling standpoint. I didn’t really have any intention whatsoever on my own of getting involved, until I started coming to his jujitsu work outs, his boxing work outs and I really took to it.  So, in November of 2005, I did my very first mixed martial arts fight.

How do you feel coming into this fight with Eric Schafer?  Are you healthy?

Oh, yeah. Actually, this has been the most productive training camp ever. I guess you could say I’m healthy by MMA standards. I think that thing everybody comes in with—bumps and bruises, and I’m no different than anybody else, but certainly no…nothing big that’s gonna hinder my performance at all.

Is there anything specific that you’ve been working on in preparation for your upcoming fight?

Oh yeah. I mean, jujitsu, Schafer’s…he’s a brown belt at jujitsu, so he’s real tough from the ground and you know if you’ve seen any of the two fights in the UFC, he’s proven he’s real tough on the ground so I’ve been working out at a Mixed Martial Arts Academy  and, you know, I’m still learning so much, I’m continuing to work on my boxing, muay thai and still training my wrestling, but I’ve really focused real hard on learning everything from the jujitsu standpoint that I could.

What do you feel are some of his weaknesses, you know, coming into this fight and how do you plan on exploiting them?

I think I kinda targeted maybe stand up as a weakness he has, however, that kind of fits into one of my weaknesses, so I’m gonna say I’ll always continue working with my stand up and I feel like I’m quite a bit better, as far as feeling comfortable on my feet, to say I could keep it standing.  I don’t think I’m there yet, but you know, I always feel that a real good wrestler will always beat a good jujitsu fighter. So in this fight it may come out you know…I may be wrong, it may be 15 minutes of the two of us to stay on our feet punching each other but I definitely see him going to the ground and I think I’m gonna be the one who dictates when he goes to the ground because of my take down, my ability to take someone down and my ability to actually defend take down as well. So, yeah, I see it as a tough ground fight.

In the past you haven’t really taken your diet all that seriously. Are you doing anything differently, you know, training and diet-wise this time around?

Yeah, actually, I have taken my diet quite seriously. I had a lot…several things were wrong in my fight leading up to…the week before my fight with Rashad, real negative impact on my conditioning and pretty much my overall attitude. But no, this time actually... for my fight with Rashad, I started dieting real hard and training real hard twelve weeks out and by seven or eight weeks out I was pretty miserable. You know, I wasn’t getting as many calories as I needed, which in turn was affecting my training. This time around, I started training real hard, you know, two a day and three a day workouts at twelve weeks out but I didn’t do a thing with my diet until four weeks out and that kind of enabled me to give me those extra calories, extra sugar, extra fat to really keep my training intensity real high and my motivation real high. So, I think this has been my best, most productive training camp ever and I think that’s one of the reasons why.

You touched on this a little bit, but looking at your past accomplishments, obviously you have a great, strong wrestling background. How much does that play a role in your fighting style and is that experience an advantage for you?

Yeah, actually it’s played a hundred percent role in my fighting style, something that’s made easier for me, you know, my wrestling background has made it much easier for me to pick up jujitsu, because of the similarities there. But at the same time it’s made kind of boxing harder because the footwork is so much different, and the way you breathe, when you’re standing, throwing punches as opposed to when you’re standing wrestling, it’s a lot different. There are some things I’d definitely have to work on, but my wrestling background is I think probably the main thing that’s enabled me to become a successful fighter. So, I’m always gonna use that.

Going back to your fighting against Rashad Evans, you know it was your very first UFC fight, and it was a tough loss for you. Can you maybe talk a little bit about that experience and what you’ve learned from it?

You know, you’ll never hear me say “Losing is a good thing.” But I will always take every single thing that I can from a loss and I feel I’ve learned pretty much everything I can from that loss. I’ve also learned how overcome things that go wrong, the week before a fight now. So as far as any lasting effects from the knockout, I have nothing…I’m ready to go, I’m ready to fight, I’m excited to be fighting again, I’m like that if you look at the past year of my career, I’ve stayed real active fighting, you know at least every month, sometimes twice a month, so the hardest part about it other than just the actual losing has been the long lay off I’ve had because of it.

Right. So were you pretty seriously injured?

No, not at all. Actually, I went to the hospital and they ran all the testing, I had the CAT scan and the MRI on my head and unbelievably everything came back negative. I mean, I didn’t even have a concussion. The doctors were saying it was kinda unbelievable, I had a real bad headache for maybe ten hours afterwards, but you know when I woke up the next morning it was pretty much nothing but embarrassed.

How does your family feel about you fighting for a living? I’m sure your last fight must have gave them quite a scare.

Yeah, that’s the tough thing you know, when you go home later to your wife, you know your parents, all the people who love you and say...it was tough at first telling them I was actually gonna try it and they…most of them knew…absolutely knew that it wasn’t gonna be something that I just tried, they…everyone had a feeling that I was gonna enjoy it and stick with it. And to have something like that happen which is…you know, I never in my whole career thought I’d ever have to deal with being knocked out like that but I did. You know, my family has had to deal with it as well. So it’s been tough but as long as there’s no lasting injuries and I’m not jeopardizing my health further, you know I’ve had check ups and you know, talks with all the doctors for several months after the fight to make sure that I won’t be taking greater risks than I was before. And as long as they keep giving me the okay, you know, I’m still enjoying it and stuff, it’s what I wanna do and you know, my family’s supportive. It’s a tough for them but they’re behind me.

Cool. Well, one last question, Sean.  Being new to the UFC, not having won a UFC fight yet, what are you hoping to prove to the world when you step into the octagon with Schafer come May 26?

I think, you know, lucky enough…I feel fortunate enough to have made some fans from my fight with Rashad and I want to make even more fans with my fight here with Schafer coming up but I think anybody who has seen my first fight is gonna be able to see my second fight is…I think honestly I don’t think it’s gonna be an understatement to say they’re gonna be blown away by the improvements I’ve made in every aspect of the game. So obviously my main goal is to win, I think beyond that I think I’m gonna look like a 100% different fighter and I wanna be…I wanna look like a very impressive fighter.

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