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UFC 143 winner Matt Brown has no plans to call out his next opponent | MMAjunkie.com

These days, the UFC encourages fighters to air their matchmaking wishes in a public forum. Provided it's not too wacky a request, callouts can help gauge interest in future bouts.

But that's one offer Matt Brown is going to turn down.

"I sort of called out one person in my entire career, and that was Renzo (Gracie)," he told MMAjunkie.com Radio (MMAjunkie.com Radio | MMAjunkie.com). "I wished I never did it; I pretty much got barred from their team."

Brown (13-11 MMA, 6-5 UFC) had the floor after knocking out Chris Cope (5-3 MMA, 1-2 ) on the preliminary card of this past weekend's UFC 143 event at Las Vegas' Mandalay Bay Events Center, but he kept quiet and instead chose to talk about becoming a better fighter. That didn't draw headlines, of course.

"When I get the media attention, I don't like it, and when I don't, I get mad," Brown said. "What it comes down to is if you win, you get the attention. If you don't, you don't get it."

Brown, of course, isn't hurting for places to train. He works in gyms around his home in Columbus, Ohio, after stints in Las Vegas and Seattle. But after he said he wanted a fight with Gracie (simply because he's such an MMA legend), Gracie's academy in New York City now is apparently off-limits.

"I'm never doing it again," he said of callouts.

Something Brown will vent about is the event's bonus situation. While he agrees that the "Knockout of the Night" winner, Stephen Thompson, impressed with a win via head kick over Dan Stittgen, he argues that he faced tougher competition that night.

"The guy he was fighting – no offense to the guy, but I don't think he belonged in there at all," Brown said. "Cope was at least a formidable matchup for me.

"If you look at Thompson's kickboxing record and what he's known for – we were backstage warming up and we were like, 'Whoa, this is not going to go good for this this guy unless he's got some mad grappling skills because he definitely wasn't prepared for the striking.'"

With his right hand, Brown most certainly showed he was ready for Cope. Although he didn't get an extra $65,000 for that fact, he can probably look forward to a discretionary bonus in a few weeks.

And some sleep. The night before his fight, a party in the next room of his Las Vegas hotel kept him up.

He promises to knock out someone else if that happens again.

[goodtimes]

I like hearing a fighter talk about the bonuses, for everyone except for a frequent main event'er it's a massive amount of money. I never thought about it so much before, but it really motivates guys to put on the best fight possible, the potential for an extra 65k-130k is just insane if you're getting 6k to fight and 6k to win.

Anyways Brown looked pretty sharp, I think what's holding him back from being a top fighter is he just doesn't have the natural speed that's required, but he really brings it and can give anyone a bad night.