Its no secret that “California Kid” Urijah Faber is arguably the best featherweight MMA fighter in the world. Apart from being the WEC Featherweight champion, he has flown through the division with his impressive 21-1 record. We go one on one with Urijah after his victory over Jens Pulver.

So Urijah Faber tell me how you feel after your fight?
I feel really good, I got to fight for my home crowd, I got the win and I got to showcase some stand up skills that people hadn’t really seen before so it was a good experience.

Where you planning to go to the floor at all? Did you have a game plan?
I really didn’t have a game plan going in I was just going to fight him and kind of figure it out at I went and basically I just felt comfortable, I felt like I was going faster than him and I could play some of my power shots and so it wasn’t really a concern of mine to stand up with him because I know I’m in good shape.

Speaking of good shape, how did you prepare for your fight? How many times a week were you training? What did your training consist of to get prepared for this fight, probably one of the biggest fights you had in your career?
Training for me was pretty much the same as usual. I the gym all day, work on grappling and MMA in the mornings, stand up in the afternoons, and sometimes Jiu-Jitsu in the evenings, just kind of depending on how I felt. I listened to my body, and if I felt to worn out I would take a day of or tone it down but other than that I was training hard.

So what is it like after you won at the … arena with the crowd screaming out your name?
Its bad ass, I felt like a rock star. Everywhere I looked I saw a familiar face and I was just stoked. I couldn’t help but smile and be in the moment.

You came out California love because you’re the California kid and you had your hair in corn rolls. What’s the difference with fighting with your hair without corn rolls, obviously the advantage of having your hair corn rolled and braided back is to get it out of your face. Was it different fighting this time?
I liked having the corn rolls, I thought it looked cool and like you said the hair was getting a little out of hand and it always gets in my face. I usually have to do something with it and that was the best case scenario I was able to keep my long hair, but pretty much be bald for the fight.

Now that you have it corn rolled for this fight, do you plan on having it corn rolled for your next fight too?
Umm I don’t know yet, I would probably do something different for the next fight, either shave it or I don’t know, maybe just cut it short like a school yard cut, I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.

So when do you think you’ll fight again? Is there any chance of you going up to 155?
I don’t have any plans of going to 155 but I wouldn’t be against it. I'm down for whatever in the sport, I just want to keep living the dream, that means training, having fun and enjoying what I do and I would fight people at 55’s and 35’s and 45’s and so on and so forth till I’m done, till the day I die.

If there is any fighter out there that you would fight, who would it be?
I use to really want to fight “Kid” Yamamoto because I feel he that he has been where I am now for a long time, he is the face of the organization and they poured a ton of money into promoting him and stuff like that. He’s got all those guys that have his back and think that he can conquer the world and I think I can conquer the world, so it’s good to have to guys like that because people are interested and it would be a worldwide fight that people would like to see. But until than I have my boy Joseph Benavidez fighting him and Joseph’s one of my top guys so let see if he can hang with Joseph first before he gets to me.

Speaking of that, you had five of your fighters from your gym fight on that card is that right?
Yep.

What did you think about Kenny’s fight?
Oh Kenny, I thought Kenny got ripped of. He thought a smart fight with Razor Rob being this amazing stand up fighter, he took minimal abuse and did some damage him self and I don’t know how the heck he lost that fight on the judges cards, that was ridiculous. That kind of sucked. Than Charlie was kind of frustrated by Dominic Cruz, I think Dominic Cruz was allusive and it was hard for him to fight so my boy Danny took the fight on with a week’s notice and went against Cerrone whose very tough, and just got caught and he was fighting pretty well up to that point. Munoz came with that KO that was the first time he had ever knocked anyone out because he is not a mean guy, it was good.

Yeah Mark did an amazing job and he has a really great future coming up ahead of him.
Yeah he knocked the dude out and he was pretty big too.

So before your fight you had a pre barbecue watching EliteXC at your house, than after that you came to the Hotel about 12 o’clock that night, than I braided your hair and we got Tacos at 3 o’clock in the morning and you probably didn’t go to bed till 4 right?
More like 3:30 probably.

That completely tells me that you obviously didn’t need any rest before your fight. What time did you wake up in the morning?
I woke up at like 11:30 am. I did it on purpose, because I train in the morning and usually the last couple of weeks before a fight I start staying up later and getting up later so it’s more realistic of when I fight, you know I fight at like 8 sometimes 9 and I usually train my hardest training at like 3 so I switch it up.

Almost everybody would know that you need to get rest before you fight, I mean you should have been in bed by like 10 o’clock but you were in bed at like 3:30 in the morning I think that’s like pretty crazy to do something like that.
My whole thing is that as long as I get the right amount of sleep I’m cool and I don’t like to sit around all day, the longer that I can sleep in the day the better because fight time than comes faster.

Is there anything that you would like to say?
Yeah, No Fear hooked it up. Thanks to my managers they are the real deal.

That after party was dope because it wasn’t like a party where there was a bunch of fans or groupies just swallowing you, it was more like a lot of your friends, it more like a private party, right?
Yeah, the club didn’t even open on that day but they opened it for me and eventually they started letting people in but I probably had a couple of thousand people I actually knew at the fight because I’ve been around this area for so long, it was nice at the after party to have a bunch of my buddies there and stuff like that, it was fun. Good stuff.

Well thank you Mr California kid, you are the man.
Thank you, Thank you.