I do not even know why, but I treat this bout just like a normal fight, only a 5-round one. I expected that everything will be different, but this did not happen. The main thing for me is the match and the opponent in my way. The opponent is very decent, I have been coming a long way for this fight and now I’m ready to win. I'm glad that I'm fighting for the title, but I do not emphasize this. I’m set for five rounds, but each time going out to fight, I'm trying to finish the bout early.
Now I'm prepared excellently, my functional conditioning-wise too. Marat is good at it as well, I've never seen him get tired, except when he took fights on short notice. But I think that the age can take its toll. My brother Magomed helps me cut weight and stick to the proper diet, he knows a lot about this, so he even cooks for me. In the last fight I had no problems in this regard, but in the fight before that it was all very bad.
But that's in the past, at the time in Warsaw there was no suitable place to recover and eat well. In St. Petersburg this will not be a problem, if anything, I hope Marat will host me (laughs). Yusuf Raisov will square off against Marat Balayev for the right to become a featherweight champion at the ACB 50 tournament in St. Petersburg on December 18.
