Brad Pickett on his opponent change at UFC Hamburg: ‘Bring it on Iuri!’

As everybody knows by now, Henry Briones is injured so is out of our fight at UFC Hamburg.

I was looking forward to finally meeting him in the Octagon, and I’m still hopeful that one day we will. But for now, it’s not to be.

I know how disappointing it is when stuff like this happens – but it’s not worth pushing your body too hard through an injury, not if you want to fight smart. I’ll be waiting for him when he’s fit and ready – although that sounds much more threatening than intended!

I’ve said before that I don’t train for a specific opponent – I’m ready for whoever the UFC put in front of me, so this hasn’t affected my training at all.

Iuri Alcantara is a game opponent – we’re around the same age and we both fought in WEC. He even knocked out Ricardo Lamas once upon a time, so I know he’s good at what he does. Bring it on, Iuri!

I promised you news of Rise of Champions in this blog post but there’s been a bit of a delay with the announcement. Such is life – whether you’re at the top of the pile or just starting out, delays occur, injuries happen, things go wrong.

I’d love ROC to become a real regional contender as far as UK MMA goes – we’re on to our third show, and I’m really happy with it. There are many ways to measure success and for me, ROC is ticking a lot of those boxes.

We’ve not lost any money, which is always a good start! But more than that we’re also noticing that the athletes on our cards want to come back, which is a huge compliment.

To me that means that we’ve been doing something right; if a fighter feels that fighting on our show is a good step for their career, I think we’re getting it right. This is a tough sport to break into, and an even harder one to make a career out of.

Part of the reason I’ve done ROC with Mickey (Papas, my coach) is because I know there’s got to be life after the Octagon for me.

As I said in my first blog, that time isn’t here quite yet, but it would be foolish not to think about it at all. And anyway, it’s an exciting thing to work on – putting on a show is hard work, but it’s incredibly rewarding.

Sarah and Buddy have arrived and it’s great to have them back by my side as I train. Buddy’s been in the gym a few times, but if I’m being honest, his grappling needs a lot of work right now so I’m going to delay his debut for another couple of years at least!

Sarah has been joining me in spinning classes – she’s caught the bug now too! It’s her birthday this weekend, and we’re heading out to a monkey park.

But mostly we’ve been hanging out by the pool with Buddy, having some quality family time.