Kevin Burns looking to raise his stock in UFC
Published by Zach Arnold on June 20th, 2009 in Current Events

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For a young fighter in UFC’s Welterweight division, Kevin Burns has had three memorable fights so far on his resume. Saturday’s night against veteran Chris Lytle could easily be his fourth memorable performance.

Burns shot out of the gate in UFC by getting a win of Brazilian veteran Roan Carneiro, which is an impressive W no matter which way you look at it. Kevin’s reputation as a BJJ black belt is legitimate, so naturally his opponents thought of him as a ground specialist.

Then came a mountain of a man in the Welterweight division names Anthony Johnson, whose punching power is devastating and extremely fan friendly.

Johnson and Burns squared off last July on Spike TV, which happened to be the same telecast as Anderson Silva vs. James Irvin when UFC counter-programmed Affliction’s PPV debut. The fight between the two young Welterweight stars turns ugly fast because Burns keep hitting Johnson with open glove shots which resulted in several eye pokes. Johnson got gauged badly by one shot and the referee stopped the fight — only to award the decision to Burns, not Johnson. There was no disqualification, much to the shock of the UFC announcers and the crowd. Burns claimed in the post-fight interview that he was using palm strikes because his hand was broken and had not healed up perfectly. An enraged crowd became infuriated at Burns and quickly wanted to see revenge.

After Johnson had surgery, a re-match was booked in late 2008. Johnson got his sweet revenge on Burns by knocking him out with a violent head kick. Anthony “Rumble” Johnson is a crowd favorite and he was satisfied in getting his win back.

‘You know, honestly, it was a wake call that I needed to invest a little bit of time in my footwork and defense in my stand-up skills. So, really, in a way I thank him for what he did in knocking me out because it really made me have that epiphany that you need to go these fix things and stop relying on your athleticism.”

Coming off of a loss to Rumble, Kevin Burns now faces a veteran fighter in Chris Lytle who is afraid of no one. He gladly takes a punch and gives one right back to you. Lytle is often criticized by the hardcores for going after bonus award money instead of focusing on the W. Case in point — he and Marcus Davis explicitly told the fans that they were going to get a stand-up war only and that exactly happened. For critics, the bout was labeled as C-level sloppy kickboxing. Lytle lost that fight by split decision.

“I came to finish a fight, not to try to win a decision,” Lytle recently stated in an UFC interview. “When you fight like that you’re going to win a lot of fights in a fantastic fashion and you’re going to lose a lot of decisions.”

Win or lose, Burns is not taking his next opponent lightly.

“He’s a really tough dude,” Burns exclaimed in an official UFC interview. “I expect him to come forward from the word ‘go’ and constantly just come, come, come, and honestly I’m built the same way so it’s really shaping up to what I see to be a fight for the fans.”

Because of Lytle’s versatility as a fighter who has been there, done that, Burns is having to prepare for every aspect of the MMA game.

“My training camp as far as the dynamics as how it was put together hasn’t changed a whole lot. The different techniques and stuff that I’ve obviously put into the different hours is really what has been modified but I’m excited, it’s been a good camp.”

“He’s an extremely tough guy who’s really fought pretty much everybody who’s anybody in our weight class over the past 10 years or something. When I got the game film from the UFC I was like ‘Wow, there’s a lot of film.” But that was actually a good thing because really there’s nothing that I can say that has been tried on him that isn’t on film for me to review which is an advantage in my opinion.”

Lytle has fought for some of the biggest and most well known promotions in the world – UFC, WEC, Pancrase, IFC, you name it, Chris Lytle has been there and fought anyone in front of him. The scary part? He’s only 34 years old. He’s been fighting his entire life. Compared to Lytle, Burns looks like a young rookie, and the veteran understands this very well.

“He’s the young, hungry fighter, you know what I mean? He’s got that on his side so I think it’s an intriguing match-up. Both of us have a lot of good things we’re bringing to the fight so I’m excited for it.”

Lytle has seen what the rest of us have seen in Burns — a man who can submit someone as skilled as Carneiro and yet get into slugfests with a brawler like Anthony Johnson. So how do you prepare for an opponent like this?

“The fight with Burns was pretty tough to prepare for because you know the first time I saw him I thought, OK, this is a ground guy, he’s real good he submitted a black belt and then the next two fights he stands up and bangs the whole time so you never know where the fight’s going to go so you have to train in all aspects and that’s kind of what I did, I try to spend an equal amount of time on my feet and on the ground just doing different things, a little bit of everything so it really separated my training but it made it good to do every aspect of fighting.”

“I’m looking to go out there and I like the way this guy fights because I don’t think he’s trying to win a decision against me. Anybody’s who not going to try to win a decision against me, they’re going to try to come out there and hurt me. I’m going to do the same, and so it’s going to be a good fight.”

It should be a good fight. Say this for UFC matchmakers — they throw the young fighters right into the lions den, figuratively speaking. Lytle may be called a gatekeeper type of a fighter for a weight division, but he has a lot of experience on his side and is a powerful striker. A win by Kevin Burns on a cable television in front of a couple of million viewers would raise his stock in UFC’s Welterweight division. Burns needs to be impressive here or else he will find his UFC career stuck in quick-sand.