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by Jack Encarnacao (jencarnacao@sherdog.com)
21691
D. Mandel/Sherdog.com
LAS VEGAS --
Fans may have had to dart to fight databases to figure out who
his next opponent was, but Mike Thomas Brown was already
familiar with
Anthony Morrison, whom the WEC announced Saturday as his
next opponent.
“I knew who he was because I was there
when he fought Micah Miller,” Brown said of the September fight
involving his American Top Team training partner. “I met the
kid, he’s a cool kid. They announced him and they called him,
‘Cheesecake,’ Anthony ‘Cheesecake’ Morrison. And he got all
pissed. He goes, ‘No man, it’s Cheese Steak. Cheese steak.’ That
was his nickname.”
Morrison (10-7) lost to Miller via
arm triangle that night, but bounced back with a pair of wins,
including an impressive 169-second deconstruction of UFC veteran
Alvin Robinson on Dec. 4. Brown will face Morrison at WEC 46 on
Jan. 10 in Sacramento, Calif.
“Morrison is just a guy
who they put in front of me,” Brown said. “He’s got some big
wins he’s coming off, he’s tough; he hits hard. It should be an
exciting fight.”
The Philadelphia-based Morrison is a
teammate of
Amir
Sadollah’s out of Team Combat in Richmond, Virginia, and cut
his teeth largely on the East Coast circuit since his pro debut
in 2006.
The fight is a two-month turnaround for Brown,
who said he was contacting WEC officials seeking another fight
almost immediately after his shutout loss to Jose Aldo at WEC 44
on Nov. 18.
“Whenever I lose I’m amped to get in there
as soon as possible to get it behind me,” he said. “I’ve always
been like that. When I win, I don’t mind taking a little time
off and enjoying it.”
The Brown-Morrison bout will be
the fifth on the WEC 45 main card, one more than is traditional
for WEC events. Versus has allotted the show extra time to allow
all of five fights to air. The event is headlined by Jamie
Varner vs. Benson Henderson for the unified lightweight title
and Urijah Faber vs. Raphael Assuncao.
Several weeks
removed from the loss of the WEC featherweight title, Brown
revealed that he wasn’t in peak physical form going into the
fight with Jose Aldo, who was able to shrug off his vaunted
takedowns, take his back and pound him out for the first round
TKO.
“It wasn’t me that night, it wasn’t me out there, I
didn’t want to fight that night,” Brown said. “I just got 18
stitches above my eye six days before the fight. I was training
with Thiago Alves and I got kneed in the face. I saw a plastic
surgeon and he gave me 18 (dissolvable stitches) above my eye. I
went in to fight because I needed to fight, for the money and
you make a commitment to fight. I was nervous and tentative. I
didn’t have that same aggressiveness. I was more like, ‘what the
f--- am I doing here?’ That kind of mentality.”
Brown,
who was on track to having a banner 2009 before the loss, hopes
to flip the script on his WEC run against Morrison. Brown knows
what he wants out of the fight, including the nickname he’d like
ascribed to his opponent.
“I was actually thinking
‘Cheesecake’ was kind of cool,” Brown said. “I kind of liked the
name ‘Cheesecake.’”
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