Based on his performance at UFC Fight Night 17 this past weekend, I think it is safe to say that Cain Velasquez is a rising star in the heavyweight division.  Perhaps the difference between Velasquez and other stars in the same division such as Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin is that he has added some more fighting skills to his reportoire, which can only enhance his standing within the heavyweights. 

Jason Perkins of Fightline.com sat down with Velasquez to discuss his training, his immediate future and his take on the inevitable bouts with Lesnar and Carwin; below are some excerpts from the interview:

Fightline.com: Congratulations on your career so far Cain. You’ve come a long way in just two years. Your striking in particular seems to be very technically solid, your boxing, particularly. Have you boxed in the past.

Velasquez: No, when I was younger my father bought gloves and we’d kinda go at it in the living room. He wanted me to box when I was younger and I wanted to too, but there was a money issue, you know, so I never got to do that. But he bought us gloves and we’d mess around. Nothing serious, but we’d spar in the living room and stuff.

Fightline.com: So, you and your brother would go at it?

Velasquez: No, mainly just me and my Dad. We’d just go at it in the living room for a while until we got tired. It was when I was in 4th through 6th grade. I was pretty much bigger than my Dad by the time I was in 7th grade so we couldn’t do that anymore, but it was fun for sure. I started wrestling after that when I was like 13 years old.

Fightline.com: And you obviously had a lot of success with that, eventually becoming a JUCO National Champion before transferring to Arizona State where you had a lot of success before taking up MMA. What a lot of fans and insiders seem to be excited about is, not only are you a high level wrestler, you’ve also shown tremendous power and potential as a striker. It just seems to come very naturally to you.

Velasquez: I think the big thing is just getting comfortable in the gym with the sparing because we spar three times a week. I think just getting comfortable with the striking part it. We put a lot of time into it. We go full out MMA or kickboxing or just boxing, but we go at it three times a week so you can’t help but get better.

For the rest of this interview, click here.