Morgan: "I fight to live; I don't live to fight."

“I fight to live, I don’t live to fight,” is how welterweight “The Squeeze” Sam Morgan (19-11) summed up his Strikeforce main event versus “Bang” Duane Ludwig (16-8) Friday, 3 October in Broomfield, northwest of Denver.

When Fighters.com spoke to him at Team Bison’s Brunette’s Gym in Minneapolis-St. Paul Friday, Morgan had just returned from a training trip at Fighters.com’s seventh-ranked welterweight Matt Hughes’s (41-7) new H.I.T. Squad Gym in Granite City, northeast of St. Louis.

“I’ve been saying that I would go down there and train with him for the longest time, since I was on The Ultimate Fighter.  So, I was finally able to make it down there.  I thought, ‘No better time than now to go down there and train for a fight that I have coming up against Duane Ludwig.’   And, uh, you know, I was keeping a promise to an old friend.”

Morgan first met Hughes as a fighter on the second season of The Ultimate Fighter.

“He has a lot of 155 and 170 pounders, like Robbie Lawler, a lot of good guys around the weight I’m at that can push me.”

This additional preparation comes at a crucial point in Morgan’s career.  Morgan has lost his last three fights and is looking to start his comeback against Ludwig, whom he knocked out in 2005.

But, his recent losses aren’t on his mind.

“I’m going in hard.  I’m going in to win.  I’m definitely not going in as an underdog.  I’m going in there as a guy that knocked him out before and is going to knock him out again.”

Morgan admits that he has changed his attitude about fighting and has grown as a fighter after tasting a buffet of recent defeats.

Morgan referred to his loss to current Strikeforce Middleweight Champion Cung Le (6-0) as “a wake-up call”.

“This is the level that I’m at.  I’m going to be fighting guys that are going to be champions.  That’s the level that I fight at.  I’m not going to expect an easy fight.  It was a wake-up call.  Hey, these are the big dogs that I run with.”

Amidst it all, Morgan has kept his head about him and realizes that this isn’t just about fighting.

“This fight is big because I’m a fighter.  This is how I live.  It is another fight; but, I’m going in as a professional fighter to do my job and live.  It’s not if this fight goes well, my life depends on every fight that I have.”

Morgan thanked his sponsors: Team Bison, Full Contact Fighter, O’Brien Chiropractic, Loop Fitness, and Squeeze, Inc.