More from Swick on Fighting ‘Rambo’ and the AKA Brotherhood

More from Mike Swick's appearance on Monday's Beatdown radio program.

On how he's approaching Saturday’s fight: “We've never seen him be stopped. I assume he's got a really good chin. I've seen him take some good punches including some really hard overhands from my teammate Koscheck, who hits really hard with that right hand. We assume he's got a really tough chin. I assume he's going to be tough to submit. He's a jiu-jitsu black belt, a multiple-time champ. So I assume he's overall a very tough and hard-to-finish guy.”

“Paulo Thiago's an exciting fight to prepare for. This is my first jiu-jitsu black belt to prepare for in the UFC. It poses a lot of different elements for the fight. I feel challenged in different ways than previous opponents. I'm super excited to get out there and mix it up with Paulo.”

“After seeing Thiago on the UFC 109 Countdown show, I had no idea I was fighting Rambo. I was watching this and I was like, ‘Wow, I'm fighting Rambo from Brazil.’”

On the AKA camaraderie: “I like being able to help out and stepping in for Kos. It helps the UFC out too and I've had to back out of fights too. So I feel its a way to redeem myself a little bit because usually I get injured and Kos fills in for me or something like that. So it feels good to jump in and still go out there and try to get a win for AKA.”

“The difference between our gym and a lot of the other top gyms is a lot of the fighters that we have are built solely by our gym. I mean you've got other camps that are top-level camps that other fighters move into their camps after they've already had a successful career, after they've already been really good. Predominantly with our camp, all the guys that are fighting top-level fighting in the UFC, fighting Strikeforce, we've all been grown, built and made right at AKA since the beginning, before we had experience, before we had any top-level fights. So when we build each other from the ground up and we make it to where we have there is a lot of camaraderie and we owe a lot to each other and it's a great fight camp. I don't think there's many gyms that can say that they built this many UFC fighters.”

On what he learned from the Hardy loss: “See this is where excuses come in. The bottom line is I didn't do my job. That's the only important thing. It was for a title shot. We both went out there. Dan Hardy did his job. Hats off to him. He went out there and did exactly what he was supposed to do and I didn't. I don't think the reason really matters. I think the fact is it was obviously a bad performance, probably one of my worst and I want to come back and get back on the winning track and that's what this fight's about with Paulo Thiago. It's an opportunity for me to get back, come back sooner than I planned, but to get back in the win column and that's what's important.”

On Hardy deserving the title shot versus St. Pierre: “I made the mistake of talking like I'm talking to my friends in front of the media and giving some of my half-thought opinions. I mean there's so many ways to look at it. I mean he doesn't have the credentials that some of the fighters do but again we both went out there knowing it was for a title shot and he showed up. He showed up and did his job. So you can't knock him for that.”