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"Joe (Silva) told me one more fight and then I could fight Wanderlei Silva. Wanderlei is hurt right now. They want me to fight in November. They threw some names out at me that I wasn't very excited with. As a fighter, they don't help me grow. I think at this stage of the game, if I had somebody I wanted to call out right now, it would probably be Rich Franklin. I'd like to get in there and mix it up with Rich...
(Laughs) Kind of funny, but my old coach who let me go for reasons that were my fault, apparently my lifestyle was a little bit too much for him-Rich is now his top student. So, basically, spite I would say... I am talking about Matt Hume, yeah...
Matt is Matt. I love him to death. He's a great guy. He really is. But he's a hard ass. If you're going to train with Matt Hume, you're going to train Matt Hume's way. That's all there is to it. I love him and I loved training with him and I think he helped me develop my skills. He helped me take my game to another level. It's just we ended up having to part ways. Now Rich Franklin is his top guy-and I want to f*** him up."
-Chris Leben talks to Jonathan Snowden at BloodyElbow.com about wanting to fight former Middleweight Champion Rich Franklin in his next fight.
Penick's Analysis: The fight itself would probably be a really enjoyable one, but I don't see this coming to fruition. Franklin has no desire to go back to middleweight, and there's nowhere near enough reason for him to make the drop just to fight Leben, as high of a profile as Leben's gotten back in the last two months. But Franklin's got bigger fish in his sights at this point. Leben still has a chance right now to make a run before his career is completely on its downturn, and a return in November will hopefully pit him against an exciting opponent, as a lot of people are going to tune in for his next fight after the Akiyama bout.
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