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Pat Barry to pull out WWE backbreaker on Kongo

Pat Barry's good side has gone © UFC

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Pat Barry has questioned Cheick Kongo's striking abilities, and warned the Frenchman that his nice side has disappeared ahead of this weekend's UFC Live encounter.

Barry and Kongo meet in the co-main event, knowing the loser is really heading nowhere in the heavyweight division. Barry is coming off a solitary win over Joey Beltran, while Kongo's last outing produced a bore draw with Travis Browne.

In Kongo's case, the 6 ft 4in Parisian has been a shadow of the man who originally entered the UFC, when he won five of his first nine bouts by KO or TKO to set up a title eliminator with Cain Velasquez.

Velasquez delivered a three-round beating to Kongo, who has since won one of four bouts. He remains the only man to take the reigning champion to a decision, but Barry is distinctly unimpressed.

"I would love to be able to say that we'll see the Cheick Kongo from [before he had back surgery]; the one who would stand there and be the heavyweight striker that he's known to be," Barry told Heavy.com.

"But he's turned into a ground-and-pound guy. I wouldn't say he's an elite striker in the heavyweight division anymore. He's a guy that's going to rush you into the cage, pull your feet out from under you, sit on top of you until you either quit or the ref stops the fight. That's what he's been doing his last few fights."

At their best, both men love to strike, but Barry has been brushing up on his wrestling for the new version of Kongo, insisting nothing in the fight can be worse than what he goes through in training.

"These dudes out here, they're wrestlers. They pick you up and powerbomb you on the ground on top of some dumbbells and that's totally normal," he said of his team-mates. "They're completely okay with that. Pow! Right on the rack of dumbbells, and it's like, `What's the matter? Did the dumbbells get hurt?'

"Cole Konrad is a monster. Brock Lesnar is humungous in the gym. Jon Madsen; these guys are all real live wrestlers, all heavyweights, who all do jiu-jitsu also. So what does Pat Barry need in his repertoire? I need heavyweight training partners, wrestling, and jiu-jitsu, and now I'm training with a bunch of heavyweight wrestlers who all do jiu-jitsu. You can't get any better than that. That's the exact concoction that I was needing to further myself."

And Barry warned Kongo that he will no longer lack the killer instinct that was missing in his loss to Mirko Cro Cop, when he dropped the Croatian three times before completely letting him off the hook.

"I'm the kind of guy who would sit there and say, 'Cheick Kongo just had an extensive back surgery, so when the fight starts, I'll just stay away from his back'. 'You just had a root canal? I won't hit you on the left side of your mouth'."

"Now, Cheick Kongo just had back surgery? I'm going to look for a scar, and I'm going to find it and bite it. I'm going to pick him up and do the backbreaker from WWF and I'm going to try to finish this dude to the point that he's never going to want to fight again ever."

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