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“I am ready to strike with him if need be. I am still not a great striker, but I feel more than comfortable trading with Bader …. I train at one of the best gyms in the country, Duke Roufus Academy. Duke is one of the best striking coaches in the country, plus he has hired some other great coaches like Scott Cushman, Aaron Bridges, Jason Kazmierczak, Omar Choudhury and Rob Smith. Great striking, BJJ, and wrestling. We have many WEC and UFC guys come in through the gym when they are getting ready for fights. The training here is top notch. We have 4 guys training for UFC 104 here, so I consider us right up there with (the top) gyms.”

– Eric Schafer sounds off to Heavy.com about his pending 205-pound battle against Ultimate Fighter (TUF) star Ryan Bader at UFC 104 from the Staples Center in Los Angeles on October 24. “Ravishing Red” has quietly strung together four straight wins after going belly up in back-to-back showings against Stephan Bonnar and Michael Bisping. Will he continue to rise through the ranks of light heavyweight? Or will he fall victim to another TUF champ at the hands of “Darth?”

“I’m definitely more experienced than he is in striking. I’ve been training striking since ‘96; probably since he was in junior high school. This may be the first guy I might not be able to take down, so I might have to show (my striking) a lot more than you normally see it. Definitely my biggest edge is that he won the reality show but he’s only had one UFC fight after that. So he’s really 1-0 in the UFC. He’s never been in there with a big name yet and never had those big fights, and I had to learn that myself. I’m working my striking a lot more and my defensive Jiu-Jitsu off my back. I’ll let him decide where it goes. I’m working my wrestling a lot less offensively, because again, he’s an All-American wrestler, so I don’t want to waste all my energy trying to take him down. So it should be a lot more fun and a lot less stress.”

– Eric Schafer sounds off to BSN Online about his pending 205-pound battle against Ultimate Fighter (TUF) star Ryan Bader at UFC 104 from the Staples Center in Los Angeles on October 26. “Ravishing Red” has quietly strung together four straight wins after going belly up in back-to-back showings against Stephan Bonnar and Michael Bisping. Will he continue to rise through the ranks of light heavyweight? Or will he fall victim to another TUF champ at the hands of “Darth?”