M&B: What do you want to be seen as, a wrestler or an MMA fighter?
BL: I’d like to be seen in both lights. I think I made it to a fairly high level as a wrestler after being in Wrestlemania and TNA, so a lot of the wrestling fans know me. I would like to get that same kind of respect from the mixed martial arts crowd.

M&B: Do you think it’s going to take beating a top contender before people give you your just reward?
BL: Yes. I think there is a small percentage of people, 5–10%, who actually watch MMA on TV, and 10% of those people will actually get on the website forums and talk like they’re gurus of the business, who will take credibility away from you unless you fight the right person in their eyes. Ninety-five percent of the masses who watch it give you respect just because you get in that cage and fight someone. That’s the important thing. After the months and months you spend training to be a fighter, and then you get out there and actually get in that cage — that’s all the respect I need from anybody.

M&B: It seems a lot of people aren’t aware of your background.
BL: Yes. A lot of times when people look at mixed martial arts, they look at what you’ve just immediately accomplished, or they make some determination from what the critics are saying. It kind of twists me up a little bit that a guy who never did anything before, maybe played basketball or was a football player, comes in and takes a jiu-jitsu class for a year and all of a sudden he’s a guru in MMA. But I wrestled for 18 years. I was a three-time national champion, second in the world championships, so I have an extensive wrestling background. Some people could look at somebody of my caliber and say, “That guy has a black belt in wrestling,” and respect that. But I guess right now in the fighting world, you have to go out there and fight to get your due respect. So I guess I have to go out there and fight.

M&B: How are you able to be in TNA and fight in MMA at the same time?
BL: TNA has a lighter schedule. I do it about five days a month. It’s not the same schedule as when I was with the WWE. I go there for three days and then three weeks later I come back for two days. So it’s not bad at all.

M&B: What’s the most challenging part about doing both?
BL: It’s the pressure people put on me. I put five fights into it and I’m doing real well with the five fights that I have. Some people feel that I should be fighting for the title. The only real obstacle is not listening to the critics and doing what I know is right in my career.

M&B: What about the training?
BL: The MMA is kind of weird. You train for several years or several months to go out there and fight for what could be a couple of seconds or what could be 15 minutes at the longest. So there’s a lot of stress going into it — whether you trained hard enough, if you’re ready for it. But once you get that first victory, a huge weight is lifted off your shoulders and you feel comfortable.

M&B: How do you keep fit on the road?
BL: I think the main thing is planning. I have to plan out my week. I can decide, OK, if I’m going to be out on the road on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I should really ramp up my training. So when I’m on the road I know that if I skip a day or miss a day, I know that I’m OK because of the time I put in when I was at home.

M&B: Do you divide your martial arts training from your traditional weight workouts, or is it all mixed up?
BL: Several months out from my fight is when I do weight training because that’s when I’m trimming calories and doing my traditional lifts. I try to do my squats and back work on days far away from my fights. When I get close to my fights, that’s when I switch my training to something like a CrossFit style workout or circuit training.

M&B: A lot of fighters dismiss men of your size and build. They say that having that much muscle requires your body to need too much oxygen and you’re going to get tired faster. How do you keep up your endurance?
BL: I think it’s silly when people say that. I don’t train like a 130-lb guy; I train like a 250-lb guy. I’m used to training the way my body requires for enough endurance to go 15 minutes or 20 minutes if needed. When you train, you train to optimize your own body, and I’m used to it. I’m used to 250 lb. I’m used to having a little more muscle, therefore my training is something different. I’m not having to cut anything. I can eat. That’s one thing that people don’t understand — when you’re cutting weight or calories, that takes away a little bit of your cardio also because you’re cutting carbs, you’re cutting calories, you’re cutting all these things in order to make weight. But for me, I don’t cut a single pound. I’m fully healed being the same weight for my training. So when I weigh in I don’t have to change anything.

M&B: Do you think you’re over the days when guys like Wes Sims are mocking you for your pro wrestling career?
BL: I think that’s always going to be there. I remember the time when I was at UFC 100 and Brock was getting ready to fight Frank Mir. There was this guy saying, “I don’t know why that wrestling guy didn’t get his ass kicked.” He was totally livid that Brock had wrestled before. I said, “You understand that he was a national champion wrestler and that’s his background.” And this guy said, “That doesn’t matter. He was one of those wrestlers.” So you’re always going to have these people who can’t look past my pro wrestling.

Look, there are fighters out there who have other jobs. Guys have to have another life. I just did “Inside MMA” with Randy Couture. Randy had just finished doing a movie. In essence, wrestling is doing a movie — a short movie clip on TV. That’s all it is. I don’t want to argue about it anymore.

M&B: Is there any particular nickname that’s been tagged on you that you prefer?
BL: No.

By Jim Schmaltz of Muscle & Body Magazine