Browne: Barnett broke the Golden Rule

Former UFC heavyweight champion Josh Barnett appeared two weeks ago on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour, and discussed what happened vs. Travis Browne, and detailed a humorous 12 step program to return to dominance.

The program is:

Step 1: Remove outside distractions, focus solely on fighting

Step 2: Move camp away from home, narrow focus, remove convenience

Step 3: Pre-camp harder

Step 4: Increase flexibility

Step 5: Work more on weaknesses

Step 6: Spend more time on recovery

Step 7: Work on learning a new language

Step 8: Kill

Step 9: Kill!

Step 10: KILL

Step 11: Kill, KILL, KILL, KILL, kill, kill, KILL, KILL, kill, KILL

Step 12: KILL!

What happened was a little more complex than “KILL.”

“Sometimes you just don’t appear, man,” said Barnett as transcribed by MMAFighting. “After 17 years, I can’t say that I’ve had tougher nights, or you’ve had nights were you didn’t perform as well as you’d like to. But this was the only time I’d ever had where it was just… I just didn’t show up at all.

“I really feel like I didn’t even have a fight. Me, ‘the Warmaster,’ Josh Barnett, he didn’t show up. Some other guy walked into the ring and sort of piddled around a little bit., but that’s not me, and it was very strange. But I figure after being in so many fights and being through this whole process for so long, it’s really not too surprising that it could happen.”

On Monday Browne appeared on The MMA Show, and took issue with Barnett’s message.

“He had these twelve steps and all this other kind of nonsense when really there’s just one step, one thing you really need to do in this sport, and it’s the Golden Rule, and that’s make no excuses,” said Browne as transcribed by BloodyElbow.

Browne has only one loss on his record, to “Bigfoot” Silva in 2012. Browne suffered a torn hamstring in the fight, that put him out for months, but when asked about the loss he simply said “The night that I fought Bigfoot, he was the better man. He beat me that night.”