(Mr. Excitement. PicProps: Peace Magazine, Canada's "Street Style" Magazine. No, seriously.)

There seems to be quite a bit of electronic hand-wringing going on this week about the prospect of Frankie Edgar’s first post-BJ Penn title defense coming against Gray Maynard. Reactions range from sheer disbelief that Edgar handled Penn in two straight fights, to pundits wondering aloud if Edgar and Maynard are really the best 155-pounders in the world to a palpable feeling of dread about watching these two match their respective styles for five rounds. While both guys are too classy to say what really needs to be said to these detractors -- we'd probably go with something along the lines of "Tough shit, assholes," but that's just us -- you can't expect them to change their fighting styles just to please the fans, either.

For his part, Edgar said at the UFC 118 post-fight press conference that he plans to just keep winning fights until the haters stop hating. Now Maynard is also on-record saying he will just keep on keeping on, at least until someone can stop the takedowns.

Maynard told Sherdog.com this week that he thinks the criticism over his current streak of seven consecutive decision wins is a bit “too harsh.” The way “The Bully” sees it, if the coaches at Xtreme Couture are going to keep cooking up winning game plans, he’s going to keep following them.

"If I was to say, 'Screw the plan. I'm just going to go out here and try to knock this guy out’ -- that would be a slap in the face to my team," says Maynard. "My coaches are coming up with these great plans and it's like, 'You know, you don't know what the (expletive) you're talking about. I'm just going to make it a crazy fight and knock somebody out. If it doesn't happen, then I'm going to get knocked out.' If I did that, they'd be kicking me out of the gym real quick … Of course, I'm going out there to knock people out. But if it doesn't happen, you still have to win the fight.”

Maynard also rightly points out that the list of opponents who make up that run of judges decisions is pretty impressive.

"If you go through all the guys I've faced. I don't know who else has done that," Maynard says. "Those are all top guys. I know (Roger) Huerta, (Jim) Miller and Edgar have never been finished and (Nate)Diaz was tapped out a long time ago by Hermes Franca. (Kenny) Florian got tapped out in the championship rounds by B.J. Penn. That's a lot of tough guys.”

Guess you can't fault his logic, though we still think "Tough shit, assholes," is the better argument.


Source: http://www.cagepotato.com/maynard-says- ... -very-much

Hate him all you want he IS the next UFC Lightweight Champion of the world.