If Ragozin is any good, he can last until the second round. If he falters, I'll have him early. I love the smell of blood first thing in the evening

Today we've got an absolutely exclusive interview with Brandon Halsey ! Brandon told us about fighting in new weight class, his opponnent Mikhail Ragozin and expectations about the coming fight. Check this out! M-1 Global: Last time you fought in 185 pounds and you said cutting weight was very difficult for you. Your next fight will be in 205, what difference do you feel? B.H: I feel great, feel strong. Really love being able to eat. I felt like I was really breaking my body down for the last couple of fights, and you saw that in my performance. I'm not going to blame everything on weight cutting, but I will say it was a pain in the. Getting down to 185 put me in the hospital and I learned the hard way. I'm not going to do it anymore. I don't think I can even explain the difference I feel this time around, not killing myself with the weight cut. We're focused in camp on the fight. Not the scale. If you know me as a fighter, and you were across from me in the cage, that should make you nervous. M-1 Global: Your next opponent is Shlemenko’s teammate Mikhail Ragozin. What do you know about him? Have you seen some of his fights? B.H: I've seen him fight. It's hard to say a lot about him because he hasn't fought very many top level guys. He moves well. He does a good job of appearing confident. He seems to fight well into the second round. He's a solid opponent. I'm glad for the opportunity to come back to Russia and fight again. M-1 Global: What are your expectations about the fight? Do you think you’ll go the whole distance or it will be over before the end of the last round? B.H: I think the fight will go my way. We'll have to see. His buddy kicked me pretty hard in the ribs. It was a very good kick. I bet he'll try the same kick. It doesn't really matter to me what he does. My expectation is to finish the fight early. If you've watched me fight you know I'm going to be moving forward from the time the bell sounds. If Ragozin is any good, he can last until the second round. If he falters, I'll have him early. I love the smell of blood first thing in the evening. I expect the fans will really love what they are about to see. There's never been a boring Halsey fight.