Thomas sent this in:

One of my favorite Jens Pulver quotes came about in 2001, before he defended his UFC lightweight title for the first time against Dennis Hallman. The topic was punching power, and as always ‘Lil’ Evil’ had plenty to say about the topic.

“When I throw a punch, it can break something,” Pulver told me. “Every time I throw, I’m trying to throw as hard as possible, and I hope something snaps, be it my hand or their face.”

Kevin Burns knows that feeling all too well, and he almost pulled off the rare double play of breaking his hand and knocking out Chris Lytle at the same time when the two met at The Palms in Las Vegas in June of this year. In the final minute of a furiously paced first round, Burns scored with a blistering right uppercut that put the granite-chinned Lytle on the mat.

Rarely, if ever, had anyone seen Lytle in this kind of trouble. What the crowd didn’t know that Burns had some trouble of his own.

“I knew I broke my hand when I hit him,” said Burns, who in the irony of ironies, broke his right hand, not the left hand that he had fractured numerous times. “I knew that something went wrong with my hand, and I felt an extreme sense of urgency before it started to hurt to finish the fight.”

Burns tore after Lytle, trying to become the first man to finish Lytle by something other than cuts. But in the process, he forgot the weapon that had brought him victory in half of his pro victories – his submission game.

“I’ve seen the tape a million times, and I see the shadow of his chin on the mat – I should have just choked him out,” he smiles. “I’ll never make that mistake again. If anything, it makes you more hungry because I know I was that close to finishing somebody who’s never been stopped, and I didn’t quite get there. It’s fired me up beyond what you could possibly imagine.”

The next two rounds were as exciting as the first, but when it was all said and done, after 15 minutes, Lytle had pulled off the unanimous decision win. A Fight of The Night bonus softened the blow a bit for Burns, who was trying to rebound from a knockout loss last December to Anthony Johnson, but what he really wanted to leave Vegas with that night was a win, something he plans on getting on December 12th when he travels to Memphis to take on TJ Grant in the opener of UFC 107. And given the styles of both men, this one is shaping up to be another Fight of The Night candidate.

“I like to come forward, and I think the UFC has recognized that, and it makes a good style matchup for other people that have the same mentality that I do,” said Burns. “That excites me because when I get there, I like to fight. I don’t like to dance around; I like to get to it. It’s something that keys in to what I like and my love of the sport.”

Burns’ enthusiasm for the fight game is evident the moment you talk to him, and it’s this passion that allowed him to build a name for himself on the local circuit while still holding down a full-time job at Wells Fargo in Iowa. But once he got the call to the big show on short notice to take on Roan Carneiro at UFC 85 in June of 2008 and made the most of it by beating the Brazilian and taking home Submission of The Night honors, the die was cast – Kevin Burns was about to become a full-time fighter. And while he puts in a full training schedule each day, he still makes it into the office on a part-time basis, training salespeople from 7am to 11am.

“Keeping a disciplined schedule and keeping the work / life balance definitely helps,” he said. “I’ve got something else that tells me to get out of bed in the morning, and it really allows me to stay focused and honed in on a pretty rigorous schedule. I don’t deviate from what I do, whether I’m in a fight or not. I never really take time off.”

So dropping from full-time to part-time at Wells Fargo wasn’t the signal for Burns to catch up on old sitcom reruns or hone his video game skills. Whatever time he used to spend in the office is now spent in the gym.

“What I basically did was the replace the time with training time, whether that’s watching films, or working on purely technical things to get better from a skill level perspective,” he said. “I’ve really used it to get as good as I possibly can in a compressed rate of time.”

And Burns has shown that he can certainly hang on the UFC level after splitting two competitive fights with Johnson and then tucking his chin in and going to war with Lytle earlier this year. Add in the win over Carneiro and he still only has a .500 record in the Octagon, but his previous performances bode well for him if he keeps improving on the way up the ladder.

“The last three fights, I’ve been learning a little bit more,” he said. “Honestly, since I’ve been able to devote a ton of time to training after my first fight with Roan, I’ve had the opportunity to go train with good guys across the country and slowly but surely a lot of things have started to click and fall into place. I’ve been able to close holes that I think I had in my game, and it’s finally all starting to fall together. I see a lot of different fighters when they initially make their jump to a level of competition like this, and you kinda go back and forth – you have some good fights, you have some bad fights, but you’re in every fight, and I honestly feel that everything is lined up for me to make a run in the welterweight division. I truly believe that. I think I was there against Lytle – I busted my hand and things sometimes don’t go your way, so it is what it is – but I learned from it, and coming into this fight, I’m ready to rock.”

It’s a long way from the cubicle in just a year and a half, eh?

“It’s kinda been a whirlwind,” said Burns. “I try to keep it in perspective as much as possible and I feel fortunate and blessed that I’ve had the opportunities that I’ve had in the last 18 months. Eventually, I want a world title and I think I possess the skills to do that – it’s just a matter of time before I put everything together. My life’s adjusted all for the good, and I look forward to the future.”

As for the seemingly never ending schedule of work, training, and fighting, he laughs.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”