MMAFightCorner.com:        Joining us on the Fight Corner is Keith Jardine. Keith, how you doing today, man?

 

Keith Jardine:  Doing pretty good, man, just drinking a lot of water, getting ready to cut that weight.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Now, how important is this fight with Luke Rockhold coming up for Keith Jardine?

 

Keith Jardine:  This fight is huge for me. I’ve been there so many times, I’ve fought so many world champions, but for me, this is my time, where I finally get my crack at the belt, and I feel like I’ve come full-circle here, fighting in Vegas, in the Hard Rock. This is where I started off, after the TUF show, and I’ve fought a couple big fights here, and now I’m home again, and it’s great.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        You talk about dropping the weight. How is the weight drop coming so far, because coming from 205 after so many fights — what are you at, like 27 pro fights at 205 and now you’ve got to drop down, how’s your weight coming along?

 

Keith Jardine:  We’ll see, man. It’s been great so far, but tomorrow we’ll really see. But it’s all about the Dolce diet. I hooked up with Mike Dolce and changed my diet, and I’m loving it, and I just put faith in him. I’ve never even, I haven’t been below 200 in so long. I’m still not there yet, but it’s going to work out.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Well, did you do a practice cut at all, no practice cut?

 

Keith Jardine:  Heck no, man, I just put my faith in the guy, and I’m going to do it. And he says I’m doing great, I’m even ahead of schedule, so it’s going to work out.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Now, a few people out there have said that, you know, what right do you have getting the title shot, being that this is your second fight in Strikeforce, dropping down. You know, how do you justify it to everybody?

 

Keith Jardine:  You know, I don’t justify it. I knew there’d be that negativity out there once I heard about this fight. I haven’t been doing any MMA — I haven’t been on any MMA sites, I haven’t been doing my Twitter or nothing, I’ve just been blocking it out, because I knew it’d be there. But you know what, for me, this is all about my body of work. Like I said, I’ve fought so many world champions, I’ve beat some world champions, and I took that fight against another world champion, Mousasi, on short notice, eight days’ notice, and fought that fight to a draw. And now I’m coming down to middleweight, and I’m just going to be a terror in middleweight. So you know what — I guess you’ve got to watch the language here — to all those guys, screw it, screw all those guys, man. We’ll see in a couple days who belongs in that ring.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        You know what, though, I think you hit the nail on the head on exactly what does justify this fight for you, and that’s the fact that you did come over to Strikeforce, and on short notice, you took on one of the top five fighters in the world, and you took him to a draw. If that doesn’t warrant a title shot or rebirth of some sort, I don’t know what does.

 

Keith Jardine:  Yeah, really, and that’s what I did it for. It was a big risk, but I took a year off to reinvent myself, and I was ready, and I took that and I made it out of there without a loss. So, it could’ve been worse, and now I’m here. I feel like I’m on top of the world, back here in Vegas, I’m doing a radio show with you guys and going to win my first title in a couple days.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Love it, and I love the fact that it’s at the place where it all started. You know, your first fight after The Ultimate Fighter was here at the Hard Rock in the joint.

 

Keith Jardine:  Absolutely.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Now, you talked about bringing Mike Dolce into your game, and I’ve heard so many people say that, say I just put my faith in the guy and it’s been amazing. And you’ve been a professional athlete for almost 10 years now. You’ve known how to cut weight, you’ve known how to make weight, you’ve worked with the best guys in the game. What is it exactly that he does differently to get such amazing results?

 

Keith Jardine:  You know, it’s just the food, man. Like, I’ve always eaten good food, but not this good. I mean, he took away all my supplements. In fact, supplements were really messing me up. I was starting to build up food allergies. I couldn’t eat nuts. I love nuts. I couldn’t eat nuts anymore. It was all the supplements, man. I love almonds.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Yeah, I guess we’ve got to clarify. You know we’re going to use that sound bite of Keith Jardine saying, I love nuts. No, we won’t do that to you, but it’s the quality of food, I guess?

 

Keith Jardine:  Yeah, it’s the quality of food, man, no supplements, organic whole foods, a lot of carbs, man. I was on a diet before, and it just wasn’t working out for me because it was more of a bodybuilder’s diet. All of my carbs were in supplements, and I just hit a wall and I was getting injured and stuff like that, and it just wasn’t working out, and that’s why I reached out to Mike Dolce, and just went completely the opposite. I eat carbs almost every meal, true, all the time, vegetables are wonderful, and it changed my life. and the food we eat, like even when I have a day off, a cheat day, whatever, like I miss my breakfast that I eat everyday…

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        That’s crazy. Now, you say the way it makes you feel. That’s one of the things that everyone’s been saying, is like, if you can’t pronounce it, don’t take it. If it wasn’t around 200 years ago, do not put it in your body. And how has it made you physically? And not even just that, all around, there are people that say hey, I eat a certain way and my sex drive goes through the roof.

 

Keith Jardine:  Well, you know, that’s it. Through training camp, you’re coming Wednesday night, and like normal, you’re just beat, you’re a walking zombie at night and you’re thinking, how am I going to be able to do this tomorrow? I’ve got to be sparring in the morning, got two workouts. And you still feel the same way at the end of the day because you just busted your butt, but you wake up in the morning and it’s like, where’s this energy from, I’m ready to go again. And that’s what it does for you, and it’s pretty great.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        That’s awesome, brother. Now as we said, you’re fighting for the Strikeforce world title, middleweight, taking on Luke Rockhold. Without giving up too much of your game plan, how do you see this fight going down?

 

Keith Jardine:  You know, for me, it’s just going to be — I don’t want to give away too much — it’s going to be a standup fight, you know. He’s going to want to test my standup. He likes to keep long and do his kickboxing, and that’s going to happen for a while, but after I get to him, he’s going to try and turn it into a jiu-jitsu match. He loves his jiu-jitsu, but I’m just too big for him to take me down, and he’s not a good enough wrestler. So once that happens, I’ve won the fight.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        And you have such a funky style of striking. It’s really unique. I mean, I’ve never seen anyone out there that moves the way you do. You know, you kind of just pump your hands weird, you’ve got weird angles you’re working, but as you look at your record, it’s been very effective for you. Where did you develop that? It doesn’t look like traditional Winkeljohn striking, it kind of looks like Keith Jardine hybrid own stuff.

 

Keith Jardine:  You know, I don’t know where I came up with that. It’s just, when I get in the zone and when I’m doing good, that’s what I look like. And later in my UFC career, I tried to clean it up too much. I was learning a lot of tricks, trying to get too technical, and I just got real stiff, and it wasn’t good. So now, I’ve brought that back, and I’m that times 10 right now, and you’re going to see a different Keith Jardine on Saturday.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        You know, it’s funny you say that too, because there’s a fighter who had a lot of success in boxing, and that was Prince Naseem Hamed, and he had such a crazy style, he was so awkward and punched from all these different angles. And when you saw the downfall of Price Naseem was in the Barrera fight, but the thing I thought when wrong there was for the Barrera fight, he brought on Emanuel Stewart, and Emanuel Stewart, you know, from Crunk, he’s a polished boxing coach. What he did is, he tried to take this unorthodox, unconventional, dynamic fighter and conform him, make him conventional, make him conform to their style and polished, and it just didn’t work for him. So, it’s kind of like I’m hearing the same thing from you, them trying to make you conform and trying to polish you up really went against what you were doing best.

 

Keith Jardine:  You’re absolutely right except it was myself doing it to myself, because after each fight you want to get better and better, and I’ve always been proud of my workout work ethic, and I think I took the wrong avenue a few times.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Now, you mentioned UFC a few times in this conversation so far. How does it feel to be back under the Zuffa banner?

 

Keith Jardine:  That’s what I took the Mousasi fight on short notice. If it was still Strikeforce and Zuffa hadn’t bought it back then I don’t think I’d have done that, but my dream’s to have a real world title under the Zuffa organization, and it’s coming true right now. So, that’s what I feel like. It’s like a family, you know. When they let me go, I felt like I was losing extended family, because that’s what cool about Zuffa, they keep the same people around. The same people since I started five years ago are still working with Zuffa, and you get real friendly, you get to know all those guys, and it’s a pretty cool organization that way.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Were you at all resentful when they released you?

 

Keith Jardine:  No, man.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Honestly, or did you feel it was justified?

 

Keith Jardine:  Well yeah, I lost a few fights in a row, even though a couple were Fight of the Nights.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Close fights, too.

 

Keith Jardine:  And there were split decisions and such like that, and I never had a boring fight. But you know what, the way I look at it right now is just, it was really a blessing, because it gave me the time to go back and reinvent myself and become the fighter I am today, which is twice the fighter I was a year ago today. So, I just look at it as a positive. And back then, what can you say? I lost a few fights, so no, I wasn’t resentful at all.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Now, I kind of want to switch it up a little bit. I know this is an MMA show, but you’ve done some acting, man, you’re quite the actor.

 

Keith Jardine:  Yeah man, I’m loving it. I’ve always wanted, since I was a little kid, I’ve always wanted to be in movies. I’m kind of a movie buff, I’ve always  loved movies, and fighting’s given me an opportunity to be in a lot of stuff. And after every fight, I try and work on my game and try and get some sort of movie, whether it’s a little movie in Canada with Steve Austin, which my last two have been, or…

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        It’s a perfect matchup for you.

 

Keith Jardine:  Yeah, we have fun.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        You played brothers.

 

Keith Jardine:  No, we’re always enemies, we’re always fighting each other for some reason.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        But he obviously wins, too, which is not how it would go down in real life.

 

Keith Jardine:  Yeah, he knows that too. He’s real humble that way, man. And two movies ago, I actually, I wasn’t the coordinator, but I got to throw a lot of jiu-jitsu and actual fight stuff into the fight scene, and you’ll see like Steve Austin, he does an arm bar on me, he does it from underneath, he goes to a knee bar and turns it into a reversal. And like, it was fun to put all that in there.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        You’re like, there’s no way you could really do this to me.

 

Keith Jardine:  You know, Steve is a huge MMA fan. He knows all the fighters, and he was just thrilled to be there doing that.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Well, most actual wrestlers are MMA fans, we’ve been seeing that. We just heard today Chael Sonnen’s being led to, his corner man will be CM Punk. I think he’s the world champion right now. So, wrestlers have always been in this world.

 

Keith Jardine:  Yeah, a lot of those guys, you know, those guys are warriors, they just came out at the wrong time. That’s what Steve was. If MMA was around back then, I’m sure he would’ve chosen that path.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Do you think that’s going to hurt the future of professional wrestling, the explosion of mixed martial arts? Do you think a lot of these guys who would go to WE are now going to look for a career in fighting?

 

Keith Jardine:  Absolutely, the future of MMA is so huge, man, like little kids — say a little kid in Los Angeles, his idols now are MMA guys, not wrestlers, not boxers, they’re looking for an MMA gym, jiu-jitsu gym, or whatever, and the fighters 15 years from now are just going to…

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        They’re going to be amazing.

 

Keith Jardine:  Yeah.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Keith, we want to thank you so much for joining us in the Fight Corner. We want to wish you the best of luck this Saturday night, January 7th, against Luke Rockhold. We hope that you hold a world title after Saturday night.

 

Keith Jardine:  Thanks a lot, guys.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        And we want to see you in movies, film, and everything else. Thanks so much.

 

Keith Jardine:  Thanks, guys.

 

MMAFightCorner.com:        Best of luck, Keith, best of luck.