Posted by Chad Edward on August 5th, 2009
Fighters.com’s tenth-ranked heavyweight “Pitbull” Andrei Arlovski (14-7) confessed to playing Russian roulette Wednesday night, a suicidal gamble during which a revolver is loaded with a single round, the cylinder spun, and then placed against the temple. The hopeless player pulls the trigger, chancing the bullet could end their life.
“First time I was 16, second time I was 30,” said the thirty-year old former UFC heavyweight champion. “It’s when you don’t care about anything.”
Arlovski was knocked out in 22 seconds by fourth-ranked “Grim” Brett Rogers (8-0) at Strikeforce in St. Louis 6 June after meeting the same end in the first round by Fighters.com Heavyweight Champion “Last Emperor” Fedor Emelianenko (29-1) at Affliction M-1 Global in Anaheim 24 January.
When quizzed about the perception of a “glass jaw”, Arlovski responded, “In the heavyweight division, it’s no joke. I wasn’t knocked out [by Rogers]. He just punch me and the referee stopped the fight. I was completely conscious. I think “Big” John McCarthy did a good job. Who knows. Who knows, maybe I come back. Perhaps he could punch me a couple more times and give me some injury.”
After his devastating second knockout loss, Arlovski returned to his native Belarus. “I talked to some priest. He read me a poem,” Arlovski related. He also spent couch time with a sports psychologist to the Russian Olympic wrestling team and communed with his family.
“I cried a lot after my fights, you know. When I lost to Fedor, I cried. When I lost to Rogers, I cried. You might be surprised, but I had tears alot in my last relationship,” Arlovski told, referencing his relationship with Playboy model Patricia Mikula.
“I want to box!” Arlovski announced his return to combat will be as a professional boxer at the end of September or beginning of October. “I definitely will continue to train with Freddie Roach.”
However, Arlovski indicated there was friction between his MMA trainers and Roach, a living legend in boxing.
“No more experiments,” Arlovski described his time with Roach training for MMA. “I have to come back to my old routines.” He announced that Roach will train him exclusively for boxing matches going forward.
Though he proclaimed, “I am an MMA fighter,” Arlovski’s MMA future is hazy. “I don’t want to make any predictions. I have a manager,” he said, noting that fighting in Japan, “would be real interesting for me, of course.”
