This according to his UFC on Versus 4 opponent Pat Barry, who the French fighting sensation will take on this coming Sunday night, June 26, 2011, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Here's what "HD" had to say about it to Heavy.com:
"I would love to be able to say that we'll see the Cheick Kongo from [before he had back surgery]; the one who would stand there and be the heavyweight striker that he's known to be. But he's turned into a ground-and-pound guy. I wouldn't say he's an elite striker in the heavyweight division anymore. He's a guy that's going to rush you into the cage, pull your feet out from under you, sit on top of you until you either quit or the ref stops the fight. That's what he's been doing his last few fights."Sorry, big man, but this is a "what have you done for me lately" kind of sport and grapplers can't be strikers, right?
Even if that is a somewhat silly and potentially dangerous assumption on Barry's part, he's treating this fight as though he's not up against a heavy-hitting knockout artist.
This is evidenced by the fact that he's now spending increasing amounts of time with the Deathclutch camp, shoring up his wrestling game with the beasts (like Brock Lesnar and Cole Konrad) up in Minnesota.
And these monsters don't play around.
"These dudes out here, they're wrestlers. They pick you up and powerbomb you on the ground on top of some dumbbells and that's totally normal. They're completely okay with that. POW! Right on the rack of dumbbells, and it's like, `What's the matter? Did the dumbbells get hurt?' ... Cole Konrad is a monster. Brock Lesnar is humungous in the gym. Jon Madsen; these guys are all real live wrestlers, all heavyweights, who all do jiu-jitsu also. So what does Pat Barry need in his repertoire? I need heavyweight training partners, wrestling, and jiu-jitsu, and now I'm training with a bunch of heavyweight wrestlers who all do jiu-jitsu. You can't get any better than that. That's the exact concoction that I was needing to further myself."
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