Heading into his UFC 213 bout with Oleksiy Oliynyk, Travis Browne has been training with former UFC heavyweight champion Josh Barnett – a man he knocked out back in late 2013 with a series of hellacious elbows.
In order to begin training with Barnett, Browne first had to squash his beef with the former champion. This beef stemmed from the fact that Browne stole Barnett’s post-fight celebration – a throat slashing gesture – moments after he knocked him out.
Browne explained his beef-squashing exchange with Barnett in a recent interview with MMAFighting.com.
“He was upset, not about how the fight went, he’s very professional about, you win, you lose, it is what it is,” Browne explained. “But I know he was upset about me doing his thing after the fight.”
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“I took fault for that, to his face, sitting across the table from him. I gave him a chance to speak and I listened. I didn’t know if he was going to be be, ‘Hey man, that’s cool for me to do,’ or if he was going to be like ‘Hey man, f*ck you.’ He was a man about it. He told me he would coach me. He’s working with me. He took it the best way I could ever imagine.”
Browne then explained why he chose to swipe Barnett’s victory celebration moments after knocking him out.
“I let my guard down a little bit and I just told him, look dude, we fought, everything happened the way it happened,” Browne said. “I was jacked. I was like ‘holy sh*t,’ right? The biggest win of my career. It was emotional, it was adrenaline, I did his move after the fight, and I just looked at him and said, ‘Man, I’m sorry. I’m not making excuses. I’m telling you right now that I was wrong for me to do that. That’s your thing.’ It wasn’t a jab at him, it wasn’t meant to be like ‘F you’ or anything like that.”
How do you think Travis Browne will perform under the tutelage of his former foe Josh Barnett?
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 7/2/2017.