Melvin Guillard: ‘I Might Fight Until I’m 50’

Melvin Guillard is nicknamed “The Young Assassin,” but that moniker might not hold up so well if the veteran lightweight sticks to his career plan.

Guillard recently revealed that he has zero intentions of slowing down anytime soon and said he admires guys like Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie for continuing to fight.

At 32 years of age, Guillard still has quite a bit of time left. He said he’s really fought over 200 times as a pro, but a large chunk of his early fights were when he was a minor in the south and it was technically illegal for him to earn money as a prizefighter. If those numbers are accurate, the Louisianan thinks it’s possible to become boxing’s Bernard Hopkins.

“I might fight until I’m 50,” Guillard told Sherdog.com in a recent interview ahead of his fight Friday at Bellator 149. “(I want to) be like Shamrock and Gracie where I can still fight. I don’t question anything in this point and time in my career. I feel better than I ever have in my life. I’ll keep fighting until the good Lord tells me I can’t fight anymore.”

Guillard said his ultimate goal is to capture Bellator titles at lightweight and welterweight and defend them both. In order to do that, he must first get past Derek Campos, though Guillard freely admitted that he knew nothing of the man before he knew he was fighting him.

“To be honest I don’t know anything about him,” Guillard said with a chuckle. “He’s an Unknown Fighter. I didn’t start to even research the guy until I found out I was going to fight him.

“He’s the type of fighter who is looking to make a name for himself by stepping up and fighting me,” he added. “I respect him for that because he didn’t have to take this fight. But he’s an aggressive fighter, which I love. He reminds me a little bit like Shane Roller, guys like that, who I knocked out when I was fighting in the UFC. Guys who are aggressive always play into my strengths.”

Guillard said that he felt better than he ever has before during training camp and that his body is finally injury-free. His broken hand has fully healed and his mental state is clearer than ever, which shouldn’t bode well for Campos. Still, with Melvin acknowledging that his foe will likely try to nab the biggest win of his career, “The Young Assassin” isn’t sweating it.

“Man, I got knockout power in both hands,” he declared. “At the end of the day, it’s about what I want to do in the fight. He’s going to fight my fight because I’m going to do what I want to do. I’ll take the fight wherever I want. If he wants to stand and bang with me -- which I highly doubt because they say they want to bang with me until they get hit -- he won’t last. I got way quicker hands and he telegraphs his punches. I just gotta be Melvin. Basically, I’m just looking forward to beating the s--t out of Patricky ‘Pitbull’ in April.”

Guillard is coming off of two consecutive losses. Though it’s not something he’s proud of, he claims that it’s nothing he’s worried about and he doesn’t see this fight with Campos as a do-or-die situation. In fact, he scoffed at such a notion.

“Dude, man, hell no,” Guillard said. “I mean, my first loss in Bellator I got injured. I fought two-and-a-half rounds with a broken hand and I still kept fighting and I almost won. This ain’t do-or-die at all because even in the fights that I lose, I put on a great show. I’m a showman; I give people great fights. My fights are the types that people talk about for ages. Do I plan on losing? F--k no. I plan on getting five fights this year in Bellator and I plan on winning all five. I’ll be knocking everybody out along the way.”