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Rashad Evans talks fighting, burn out and Chael Sonnen

Former UFC Light Heavyweight champ Rashad Evans is gearing up to face broadcasting colleague Chael Sonnen and says he's past the burn out that came with a two-fight losing streak.

Paul Abell-US PRESSWIRE

Rashad Evans is excited about his upcoming bout with Chael Sonnen. The Fox Sports booth-mates will be trading their headsets for mouthpieces and MMA gloves at UFC 167 in November and Evans is glad to have a bout worth looking forward to. He told Ariel Helwani yesterday on the MMA Hour that he's been battling burn out for a while:

"It's not something I'm going to try to find at night. It's something, I've got to cross it every day. I've got to remember, okay, this is why I'm doing it," Evans said. "See, the biggest part, what happened to me before, is the fact that I forgot why I was doing it. I didn't enjoy it anymore. I was to the point where I was just going through the motions. I didn't enjoy the process, because it's all about the process. You've got to really dig deep and you've got to really love every single thing about the game.

"The grind, the grind is where it's at. So I gotta fall in love with that grind again. And that grind is what brings that dog out. Because when I'm out there and I'm doing that extra work, when I'm hitting that bag and I'm making myself go until I can't go no more, until I want to pass out because I'm so dizzy with exhaustion, when I do that, I know somebody has to pay for that. So when I'm on and when my mindset is going like that, on fight night it becomes easy, being I've been breeding that dog all through training camp. On fight night I get to let it out."

Evans broke a two-fight losing streak with a UFC 161 split decision win over Dan Henderson. Prior to that he lost to Antonio Rogerio Nogueira and a title shot against Jon Jones.

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