- Shane Burgos admitted that training at PFL is harder than he thought
- “Hurricane” talked about Clay Collard ahead of their upcoming main event fight
Shane Burgos is currently gearing up for his 2023 PFL 9 headliner bout against Clay Collard. Ahead of the match, the former UFC featherweight opened up about how difficult his preparation has been at PFL and his honest thoughts on Collard’s game.
Fighting at PFL is no walk in the park
In an exclusive interview with MiddleEasy, Burgos confided that he knew PFL was going to be different simply because of its unique format in which fighters get to fight more frequently. However, “Hurricane” said it gets harder once he was already doing it.
“I had expectations that it would be hard but you don’t really know, you can expect it to be hard but until you’re in it, you don’t really know what to expect, I’ll say that for sure. So it’s definitely harder than I expected but I didn’t know exactly what to expect because I’ve never been in this position before when you’re fighting back-to-back-to-back,” Burgos admitted. “It’s definitely not just physically f**king exhausting but mentally, it’s really, really tiring. You have to find that happy medium where you’re burning yourself physically but also mentally because obviously training becomes so monotonous. The only thing that’s good about it, I’m switching up the opponents so I’m not doing the same exact game plan three times in a row. So I’m doing different game plans so that makes it a little bit mentally easier.”
Clay was a no-brainer fight
Burgos also revealed why he thought a showdown with Collard was a no-brainer and what he thinks of “Cassius” as an opponent.
“100%! [I’m excited to face Collard] As soon as I signed, everybody was talking about that fight but I was thinking about that fight too. Because in my mind I was going 50/50 on whether I was gonna do 45 or 55 so I was like at 55, what are the fun fights there? And at 45, what are the fun fights there? And obviously, the fight fighter that came to mind at 55 when it comes to a fun matchup, a fan friendly matchup is Clay Collard. You look at the way he fights, how could that not be a fun fight to watch. Who doesn’t want to see that fight right?,” Burgos shared.
“He’s obviously a good boxer, that’s what he does good, he’s good at volume and putting up combinations together he’s not really one shot kind of guy, he’s not like I knocked you out one big puncher or anything like that but he’s a volume guy, breaks down slowly so that’s how that’s what I’m looking at. He’s got two good back-to-back wins this season so those are the fights that I’m really focused on… but I’m also not putting too much stock into what he’s gonna do, I’m focus more so on what I’m gonna do and how I implement them on my game,” he continued.
It’s gonna be far from easy
In a PFL playoffs promo clip, Collard confidently and repeatedly called a bout with Burgos, “easy money.” For “Hurricane,” it’s quite a way to promote the fight but business aside, he would go out there and prove the PFL stalwart wrong. Burgos pointed out that his boxing has been underrated but definitely “good.”
“It’s cute. It’s funny, he’s trying to build the fight up,” Burgos said of Collard’s claim. “Obviously. He knows that’s not easy money. He has some really good wins on his record but I’m not gonna I wouldn’t call any of those big wins as easy money. I only have four losses and if you ask any of those four guys that beat me, I don’t think any of them would say I’m easy money. I don’t really put too much stock honestly what my opponents think or what my opponents wanna do, I could give a f**k less, I could not care less, I don’t lose any sleep thinking about what they think or what they said I truly could not give a f**k what anyone thinks or says.”
“You think I’m not gonna go out there and go punch for punch [but] I’m not gonna stand there like an idiot, I do like my boxing, I’ve been boxing for a long long time,” he added. “I don’t have any professional boxing or even amateur boxing on my record but I’ve been sparring pro boxers for 10, 11 ,12 years at this point, like high level pro boxers with big names so, I do like my boxing a lot.”
Collard is coming in as the No. 1 seed, while Burgos, who made his PFL debut this past April, is being viewed as one of the big-name challengers in the lightweight division this season after securing a dominant decision win over Yamato Nishikawa at PFL 6. The bout will take place at 2023 PFL 9 on August 23rd at the Hulu Theater at the Madison Square Garden, New York, and will be aired on ESPN.
