Matt Mitrione Talks About Shane Carwin's Gas Tank, Training

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Matt Mitrione has been making the media rounds this week in preparation for this Sunday's matchup with Christian Morecraft at UFC on Versus 4. While he's being a little more low-key than he was a few weeks ago when he called out Tito Ortizhttp://www.sbnation.com/mma/fighter/122519/tito-ortiz, Meathead is always going to give you the blunt truth when you ask him about someone or something. On Steve Cofield's ESPN radio show this week, that topic was fellow UFC heavyweight Shane Carwin and his apparent cardio issues:

"I think Carwin is a good guy, but I think Carwin has a lot he has to learn, especially about his explosiveness now. Gassing is a huge thing to a heavyweight. For it to happen the first time in a major fight (versus Lesnar), I think it might have played a little bit of mind games for Carwin," Mitrione said. "I think it's very serious. Gassing is a big damn deal."

And he definitely noticed it against Junior dos Santos at UFC 131 as well:

"I heard he said between the first [and second], 'my legs are dead'. I think that's another sign of the adrenaline dump. Adrenaline dump is a b---h and once it sets in it really plays mind games with you," said Mitrione. "He has a couple more fights to gets used to it. It can really make or break you."

He also spoke to HeavyMMA.com, and talked about where he trained for his fight with Morecraft this Sunday:

I spent my entire camp at Randy's (Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas), so I spent five-and-a-half, six weeks there. I stopped through Gary, Indiana a lot actually. Miguel Torres' gym has a fella named Anthony Gomez, so I ended up going up there and working out with him quite a bit. I worked out with Pat Barry up in Milwaukee a couple different times, Andrei Arlovski in Chicago. I went to California and worked over at Tiki Ghosn's gym. Tried to get some time with Josh Barnett; couldn't get some time with him. I went out and worked with Eddie Bravo. I've been around.

Is it weird that he said he spent his whole camp at Couture's, then named five other places he trained at? He might be referring to the past, I guess. This leads to him talking about why he spreads his training around as much as possible:

Really, I travel a lot, and really, it's just because I want to be like a foodie.

A foodie goes around and tries everybody's food; "I really love this about this, that about that" and they create their own dishes. That's what I want to be about fighting. I really want to be a guy that never turned down an opportunity. Even if I get my ass kicked in a gym, I still want to be able to be like, `Yeah, I rolled with Eddie Bravo. Yeah, I grappled with Josh Barnett and he put me in this one spine lock, oh my gosh.' You know?

I want to have those references, I want to be able to have done that, like coach Neil Melanson does. He trains with everybody, every name in the book I've ever heard of as far as catch wrestling and jiu-jitsu goes, and now Coach has made his own cookbook. That dude's got stuff that nobody else does in the world, and he's phenomenal at it, and I want to learn that too.

He goes on to break down his game a lot more and explain why he feels he's underrated in the latter interview, which is a good read. You can read it here, and catch the full audio of his interview with Cofield after the jump.