By MATT MOLGAARD
MMANEWS.COM Staff Writer

To the chagrin of fans, the always dangerous power puncher Shane Carwin’s been relatively quiet since being soundly outclassed by the talented Junior dos Santos at UFC 131. Over the course of three rounds, dos Santos beat Carwin to the punch, and for the most part, avoided sticking around for counter strikes. Carwin showed some spirit and valuable composure, but he came up decisively short on the score cards just the same.

Shane’s finally broken his silence, and during an interview with MMAjunkie the Grudge product directly addressed his last fight and some of the things he felt went wrong.

"After every fight, you always try to work on things and become a better fighter, and I think the cardio thing became too much of an issue for me in my last camp," Carwin told MMAjunkie.com Radio. “It took some of the animal out of me in that fight. I think I should have pressed that fight a little more with Dos Santos.

"With what we had worked on and everything, I can go the distance, and that's not a problem. I felt like I had another easy two rounds in me. But that's just the type of warrior I am. I wasn't going to say, 'Quit.' I wanted to keep going. I wanted to keep fighting in there."

Knowing that Shane’s been working at eliminating any perceivable weaknesses’ is definitely admirable, but a few major questions loom: when will we see this animal return to competition and who might he prefer to face?

"Look for a return in the beginning of the year," Carwin states. "I just want to get back in there and just fight.

"Now that we've acquired Strikeforce, there's some interesting guys over there that I'd like to fight. But they're all top heavyweights. They all bring something exciting to the game. I think every fight is exciting no matter who it is."

Carwin is indeed correct, there are some stellar heavyweights under the Strikeforce banner, and depending upon how the heavyweight tournament unfolds, we could be treated to a slugger’s dream bout: just imagine the fireworks a collision between Carwin and Sergei Kharitonov would produce!

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