Cung Le Focused on Smith for Now, Not Movies
John Chandler Dec 9, 2009
D.
Mandel/Sherdog.com
With movie commitments and intriguing potential matchups on the horizon, Cung Le is content to take his upcoming fight against Scott Smith the same way that he's approaching the remainder of his MMA career: one fight at a time.
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Le's noncommittal answer regarding his future was similar to the one he gave when asked about a possible dream fight against recent Strikeforce signee and former UFC and Pride veteran Dan Henderson.
"I'm not looking forward to anything else except fighting Scott Smith right now,” he said. “I've got tunnel vision at the moment.”
Le, widely regarded as one of the most dangerous strikers in the sport, has not fought since capturing the Strikeforce middleweight title from former champion Frank Shamrock, whom Le defeated via third-round TKO after breaking Shamrock's arm with one of his patented kicks in March of last year.
A title defense never came for Le. He spent much of the past year filming his roles in “Fighting,” “Pandorum” and “Tekken” before eventually vacating his middleweight title in September, only to sign on to fight Smith less than two months later.
"Two years ago, before my first MMA fight with Strikeforce, I was actually doing a movie, but the schedule was spread out that it didn't affect me that much," said Le. "This time was different. It was really hard to vacate the belt, but I felt it was the honorable thing to do. I didn't think it was fair for all the middleweight contenders to fight for an interim belt.
"[My return] was sooner than expected. I was planning on coming back next year, but I had a movie project that was pushed back. Scott [Coker] told me that if I wasn't filming, he would love to have me, so here I am. I'm very excited."
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