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Obviously you're about as different as a fighter stylistically from Arreola as you could be, but did you learn anything from that fight as a fellow young American heavyweight trying to break into the title picture?
EC: With Chris, he didn't change anything... I'm pretty sure he worked hard even though he came in at his normal weight. But you can't just eat whatever and drink whatever and then go on back to the gym. That takes away from the overall performance you're going to give that night, regardless of what you may believe or what people may believe. That's going to take away from that. Trust me.
EC: So my plan would just be to give my best, give my all and stay the course in camp. Make sure I do everything right, do everything, eat right, go to sleep, do all the things I should do. Then when I get into the ring with him, just stick to the game plan. And the game plan would be that you cannot, I repeat, cannot stand and watch these guys fight. And that's what a lot of these people do! They are shorter guys most of the time that fight the Klitschko brothers and they just stand and watch them punch, and think they are going to take a few to give a few. Not gonna happen.
Not against these guys.
EC: Exactly. If you take a few from them, that may be your last few. You don't want to do that. So you have to find a way to be like a fly. You know, you swing at a fly, you miss and the next thing you know you're dead tired and you're frustrated. That's the kind of thing, that frustration, that I want them to go through. I want them to be so tired that they basically just give up.
EC: That's what basically happened when Vitali fought Chris Byrd, he basically got tired of swinging and missing. Even though he was winning the fight for the most part, he got tired of swinging and missing... it's frustrating! Same thing when I fought Dimitrenko. He would throw these punches and be like why can't I nail him with this shot? Why can't I figure this out and how is he hitting me? Just making him feel really uncomfortable and really unsettled... then they start to panic, then they don't know what to do... and that's in any sport.
EC: That's what I intend to put these guys through, a serious meat grinder. Now I'm not saying I'm going to go in there and knock them out, I'm not gonna run my mouth and do all these kinds of things. But what I am going to do is frustrate them, make them uncomfortable and make them not want to be in the ring anymore.
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