Urijah Faber: I'm Going to Be the World Champion Again at 145

Faber, who was the World Extreme Cagefighting champion at 145 pounds until his shocking first-round TKO loss to Mike Brown in November, told me this week that preparing for his June 7 rematch with Brown at WEC 41 has consumed him, and that he's ready to take the belt back. The full interview is below.

Michael David Smith: When you look back on your first fight with Mike, what do you think you did wrong?
Urijah Faber: I know what I did wrong: I just basically got caught in a bad position. I tried to do an elbow, got caught with a big punch and you know the rest. The biggest thing was just making a mistake. I thought I was fighting pretty well before that and then I made a mistake.

Frank Mir said he thought that spinning back elbow you tried was an indication that you were taking Mike lightly. Do you think there's some truth in that?
No. I don't really think too much during my fights, so it's not like I was thinking, "Oh, Mike Brown's not too tough, I'll just throw a back elbow." It was more like I just bounced off the cage, I could see Mike out of the corner of my eye coming toward me, and I tried a sneak attack and just got caught.