Bloody Elbow

Sean Loeffler was supposed to fight Buddy Roberts as a preliminary fight on UFC on Fuel TV: Ellenberger vs. Sanchez. He was on target with his weight, confident that his gameplan and training would lead to victory and warming up in the back rooms when disaster struck. A misstep led to a foot injury and despite his best efforts to tough the pain out and continue the show, ringside doctors and UFC organizers called the fight off.

Loeffler might be the best storyteller in MMA that I've heard yet and the disappointment of the injury's timing and the cancellation of the long awaited fight on the biggest stage in MMA is clear as crystal in his words. However, Sean has a great sense of humor and full bodied descriptions of his emotions, experiences and thoughts abound in the interview he gave to the Verbal Submission, a weekly radio show run by MMA Mania's Brian Hemminger, Bloody Elbow's Ben Thapa and Gerry Rodriguez (who was cageside as a member of the photography corps).

A short excerpt is included below and the full first half of the transcribed interview can be found at MMA Mania:

Sean Loeffler: Yeah, as you guys know, I've been fighting professionally for 12 years through freaking every fight fight promotion across the planet and I've been pretty successful. It seemed like my time was pretty much due. I'd never felt better going into training camp with my coaches and with my preparation and my conditioning. I didn't spend one minute in the sauna. I just dieted. I walk around at 218 and I'm 6'3 and I didn't have to sauna for this fight. I just sat in the bath tub for an hour and was 185.

It was kinda funny because, a little precursor, and I know you guys are just gonna roll your your eyes and go, "Oh man," but my girlfriend, the morning of my fight, she woke up to go get her hair extensions in and she goes to get her bag and the mirror had broke in her jewelry bag before she left the room and I didn't really think about that. Then one of my coaches texted me on the way to the arena saying, "Hey, stretch out real good. I had a bad dream. Just no injuries," and then 30 minutes before I fought, I only got injured four minutes before our fight but 30 minutes before I fought, my best friend text messaged my coach, "Tony, how's Sean looking," and Tony put, "He's injured, he's not fighting....LOL just kidding, I've never seen him better!"

I was four minutes away from getting ready and Burt [Watson] from the UFC, you know Burt and all the guys that run the show are like, "Hey, you're on deck. Are you ready to go?" and I'm like, "Never been more ready. This guy's about to meet a bullet called my right hand," and my coach says, "Okay, one more hard blow," which to the audience out there means a really intense minute of work after you're done warming up to just get that little bit of sweat and keep going because we like to compete on the second wind as they call it in fighting so we did that 20 minute hard workout, took a five minute break and one more hard blow before we walked out.

[Cue ominous music...]

What are you waiting for? Go check out the first half on MMA Mania!

The complete audio of the Loeffler interview can be found at roughly the 32 minute mark of the February 19th, 2012 edition of the Verbal Submission.