Rogers: Jaws will drop when I fight Fedor
In an interview with FanHouse, Rogers discussed the fight with Fedor, growing up in the projects in Chicago and how…
In an interview with FanHouse, Rogers discussed the fight with Fedor, growing up in the projects in Chicago and how his life has changed since beating Andrei Arlovski in June. The full interview is below.
How many of Fedor’s fights have you seen?
I had never sat down to watch one of his fights until his last fight against Andrei Arlovski. Before that I had just seen clips here and there. I think it’s good that I haven’t been a big Fedor fan: A lot of the guys he’s fought fall too deep into the hype.
Where are you in your Brazilian jiu jitsu — white belt, blue belt, purple belt, what?
Man, I have no clue. I don’t rank myself with belts and I don’t care about other people’s belts. To me, that can be solved with a punch to the head or a punch to the body. Most of my jiu jitsu is just about getting out of bad situations. I want to win my fight by knockout.
Was it a tough area, where you grew up?
My old neighborhood in Chicago was definitely the ghetto. Every day it was a challenge getting to school and getting home from school, walkiing home without getting messed with. You had to walk a certain way and look over your shoulder, and I had two younger siblings I had to take care of, too. There were a lot of gangs at that time — it was pretty bad. That’s the reason why my grandma was like, “We’ve got to go. We’ve got to move.” If I had stayed in Chicago I would’ve been like everybody else, joining gangs.
Was that upbringing the reason you wanted to learn how to fight?
At a young age I always wanted to learn some kind of martial art discipline but we just didn’t have the money. When I was young I played basketball and football because I’m a competitor and competitors have to do something, but what really excited me was when I was able to take tae kwon do, and then I did some amateur boxing, and then from there I kind of found out about MMA.
What do you think people are saying about Brett Rogers now and what do you think they’ll be saying about you after you fight Fedor?
Right now they’re saying I’m fat and out of shape and I have no chance, but the people saying negative things about me are the people who don’t know me. Once everybody sees what I do in the cage, jaws are going to drop.