(No hard feelings? PicProps: AvantguardBJJ)

Shameless plug: Our man Pat Barry will appear on next week’s episode of the Bum Rush podcast and our interview with him – which taped yesterday – is reportedly pretty awesome. If you’re not already listening to the show (wait, you’re not already listening to the show???) next week would be a good time to buy a ticket for the Bum Rush express. Seriously, get on that shit.

But we digress, Barry also talked to some other “media outlets” this week about his upcoming fight with Joey Beltran at Fight for the Troops 2 next Saturday and the results are typically entertaining. Case in point: Barry’s interview with MMA Weekly, where it becomes clear that he’s been studying a lot of film to get ready for Beltran. George Romero films, mostly.

“He’s a living zombie,” Barry says. “Everything you throw is going to land on him, but he’s going to constantly walk forward and, eventually, you’re going to get too tired of hitting him in the face. And then, he’s going to catch you. Just like any movie zombie. Not the 2008, ’09 and ’10 zombies that run really fast, but the traditional ‘Night of the Living Dead’ zombies that crawl towards you really slow. Yeah, he’s like those.”

It will be Barry’s first appearance in the Octagon since he broke nearly every bone in his body against Mirko CroCop back at UFC 115. Dude obviously needed some time to heal up and get back in the gym after he and CroCop committed those atrocities on each other. With some time to reflect on it, Barry now says he’s realized maybe this whole MMA fighting thing is more work than he first thought.

“Before the Cro Cop fight, I would have thought absolutely, this could be a very fun fight,” Barry says. “But then I realized that I’m capable of breaking my entire body trying to hit somebody … I just tried to make his head explode and it just didn’t work. My hand gave out before his face did.”

Barry is already writing a letter of apology to his own body this time around. He says if we thought the CroCop fight caused carnage, we ain’t seen nothing yet. 

“If I’m going to break my hand on Cro Cop’s face, then both of my hands are going to come off in (this) match,” Barry says. “They’ve got to. There is no way I can punch him in the head and not break both of my hands and feet.”