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MMAYOU.com got the chance to speak with one of the top featherweight fighters in  the world in Jeff "Big Frog" Curran. Check out what Curran has to say about his last fight with Urijah Faber, his thoughts on Alexandre "Pequeno" Nogueria, who he would like to fight next and much more.
MMAYOU.com: First, how are you doing? How's everything?
Curran: I'm good man, just getting done with a workout, hanging out a little bit.
MMAYOU.com: What's new with you?
Curran: Depends, I got the Alligators (Curran's fight team) training and everybody's doing their thing and I'm getting ready to sign for a fight on June 1st so I'm getting close to going into a couple of months of training myself for that fight. I'm just training and that's pretty much what's new.
MMAYOU.com: I'd like to speak to you about your last fight for a minute. During your fight with Urijah you had him in some serious trouble. You were doing well in the standup and you took his back a few times. Give us your thoughts on the fight; what went right, what didn't, and how you feel about it.
Curran: Everything went fine. I wish I would of just been maybe a little more aggressive when I had him stretched out and I had his back in the first round but the second round came and again I was fine but somewhere when I was in his guard he threw a couple of wild punches and one of em, like one of the backs of one of them clipped me somewhere in the nose. That was kind of the beginning of it. I didn't get discouraged or anything I just kind of kept going and by the time I was on my back my eyes filled up with blood and I had a hard time seeing, and it stings really bad, and I had a headache right away and you kind of feel like you are under water. Eventually that cleared up and I was fine. He didn't do any damage to me when I was on my back, he didn't really land a single shot to be honest. He maybe kicked my leg once. But he just looked really aggressive, he was strong and I knew I had to be really careful. When I sat up and went for a single leg, I got back on top and he went for the choke, I kind of fell to the wrong side and he went to the right side and that was it.
MMAYOU.com: You've stepped into the ring with MMA's elite; Serra, Faber, Yamamoto and more. Who has been your toughest fight?
Curran: My toughest fight to date, the one that was the roughest on my body and kind of the hardest to deal with would be Yamamoto. I didn't feel that same pressure from Matt Serra. He just, maybe being a little bigger, a little slow, compared to him. Not being as ruthless with his ground and pound attack. Being a jiu-jitsu guy himself we kind of meshed a little bit. I definitely think Yamamoto was my toughest fight to date.
MMAYOU.com: Is there anyone in particular you would like to face right now?
Curran: Right now I don't have anyone in particular. Whoever is going to help my standing and getting back into title contention would be good. I know there are a handful of guys coming out like, joining the WEC right now, former Shooto champion Pequeno Nogueira, he's fine. I'd like to see him win first in the WEC and possibly maybe fight him in my next fight after the June show. I actually asked for the winner of his fight. That's pretty much what I'm looking for is maybe getting in a couple of good wins against high profile guys and then another shot at the champ, whether it's Pulver or Faber.
MMAYOU.com: How is your gym coming along? And please fill us in on your cousin Patrick Curran.
Curran: Basically with my gym I currently have 14,000-15,000 square feet, somewhere in there. I've been renting from this plaza for about five years and I'm just totally outgrowing it so I found a building in the area that fits perfect for what I'm doing. It's about 24,000 square feet and 12,000 of that is just wide open gym and mat space. We're looking to close on that building at the end of May, early of June. I think May 23rd or June 2nd is our closing date. That's just really good news for us here. We're all excited about that. We're bringing in a wrestling school that is really famous in the area and across the nation for producing champions from little kids up to the Olympics. So we've got some good stuff going as far as the gym goes.
As far as the XFO goes, my fight promotion, I feature my fighters on that in the earlier parts of their career and I'm lucky enough to be putting my cousin Patrick who is twenty years old. He's taking his first, er, second pro fight, fifth fight total and he's totally excited because Tapout wants to do a storyline on him being that he's another Curran and he's coming up the same path and kind of do the whole bloodline angle and they're coming out to shoot that exclusive fight and profile him for the show on my fight promotion. So I'm really excited about that. XFO gets to be on Tapout and that my cousin and another one of my fighters gets to be profiled again and it's kind of like a double-whammy and it's going to probably hit right at the perfect time.
It just all comes together, the timing of it all, I'm just kind of fortunate right now for all of that to be happening at once.
MMAYOU.com: I know you have a supplement company, how is that going?
Curran: My trainer and I have been pretty strict on supplements as far as straight-protein and simple carbs when it comes down to the three months of training camp and getting intense. We just basically started talking and we decided we are going to go ahead with a nutrition company and just carry a few of the basic products we think all athletes need. There is no junk or nothing in any of them. It is all straight up good stuff on more of the expensive end of the supplement industry but we're going to sell them for real affordable prices. We've got a web-store going. We don’t have the product yet we've got sample products and we've all been using it around here. I got my web-domain saved. It's www.bigfrognutrition.com. We just don't have the site finished yet. I think in probably four to six weeks we should be fully operational.
MMAYOU.com: In closing; is there anything you would like to say to your fans?
Curran: Thanks for all the ongoing support, paying attention to my career, and taking the time out to watch and support in any way they can do. MMAYOU.com would like to ask its readers to please visit www.teamcurran.com for more information on Jeff's gym and school and www.jeffcurran.tv for more information on Jeff.
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