Spokane-based fighter, Cody "The AK Kid" McKenzie (13-2) takes on Team Alpha Male's Chad "Money" Mendes (11-1) at 145 lbs on the main card of UFC 148: Silva vs Sonnen II on Saturday July 2nd in Las Vegas. Cody spoke with NW Fightscene the week before the fight and talked about the matchup and much more...

NW Fightscene: The fight's a week away. How do you feel?
Cody McKenzie: Good. Weights on. I just ate a whole bunch of sushi. I've been training harder than I've ever trained. Just feeling great. Lyle Beerbohm has been pushing me really hard... I'm going to go beat his ass and choke him out!

NWFS: So you've been down training down in Stockton CA, as well as up in Spokane?
McKenzie: Yeah, I've been sparring in Cali. I was in Vegas for a year but now I'm back in Spokane and I'm also doing cross-training with the Diaz brothers. They're very good. They're amazing. I consider Nathan a good friend. Nathan is a great guy, him and his roommate down there. I lived with them for a few weeks before my last fight. They helped me out a lot and I've seen the light with diet. Nate taught me a lot about diet. They all did. Those Stockton guys are really smart with what they eat and very smart with how they train. I consider them a big part of what I do and the fighter I'm going to become.

NWFS: I think that shows you are willing to go out and learn from different people. How do you see your career development?
McKenzie: It's high and low. I'm a roller coaster ride of emotions and have been over the course of my career... I've been in this sport since I've been 16, 17 and now I'm 24. I've been in it a little while and I got cocky for a bit like anybody does, especially right off the show [The Ultimate Fighter Season 12] and everybody knowing my name. It went to my head. I'm afraid to admit, but I'm an idiot. [Laughs] I was like 'Oh yeah, I'm such a good fighter. I can do this all myself. I don't need nothing, don't need nobody'. And now I'm really starting to see that I do... I became an idiot for a long time and I'll always be an idiot. But at the same time I work hard and I did see the error in my ways. I realized too that it's not I don't have a team, but that my team is just unorthodox and my team is everywhere and branched out. Lyle Beerbohm, I consider him my leader, sensei, whatever you want to call it. He's the man.

Lyle Beerbohm and Cody McKenzie

NWFS: I read online where some people think Mendes will be able to outstrike you. But with him being 5'6 and having something like a 66 inch reach, and you being 6'0 and having something like a 74 inch reach, I would think there would be no way he's going to want to go in and strike with you.
McKenzie: Oh yeah. And I work a lot of striking. He's boxed me before. He's way more athletic than me. It's no secret what he's coming with and what I'm coming with. We all got videos out there. I fight how I fight. I come out swinging and winging them, and being unorthodox a lot of times. People think my standup sucks but it's like no one's ever stood in there and then been like 'yeah, it sucks'. [Laughs]

NWFS: Well, no one's seen it too much of it.
McKenzie: Yeah, a lot of times no one's seen what I got unless they followed my career very closely and watched every fight. I had a good little standup war in the Middle East but I doubt too many people caught that show. I don't even have a DVD of it myself. But I know it was a standup war because for five minutes we stood toe to toe.

NWFS: With Mendes, most of his fights have gone the distance. This is something that has to be on your mind. You've said in the past that cardio has been an issue with you. What have you done to address your cardio?
McKenzie: I just wasn't training properly. I like working my kickboxing and I've always lacked on the ground. A lot of people don't know that about me because I have a shitload of guillotines and everybody thinks like I'm some sort of ground technician. Yeah, I'm a white belt with no wrestling. [Laughs] I don't know where this idea came from that I have such great grappling. It's because I smack fools up and they all shoot and get choked. The times I have tried to wrestle in fights, I've lost those fights. So this fight, I started training a little more properly and started wrestling a bit more and worked my defensive wrestling more than anything. I want to keep it off the ground. Before, I feel like I lost a couple fights because coaches were like 'go take him down and guillotine him', because that's what they thought all I had. I kind of let them talk me into that game plan, and I went and tried it and gassed out trying wrestling.

Now, I'm a little older and know myself better than anyone knows me, so I know my style and know what I got to do. And that's whoop him! I got to break him. Like you said, he's got a bunch of decisions. If you look at my record, I have no decisions. I got a lot more fights and no decisions. I'm not trying to sell that I'm going to go in and beat him, or that I'm a better fighter. What happens July 7th, happens July 7th.

NWFS: Your last fight against Marcus LeVesseur was said to be a come-from-behind victory, though I thought you never looked to be in serious trouble. And you looked patient in there. Was that something in your mind, to stay patient?
McKenzie: Oh yeah. I just go into to fight guys and that how the way it's fought. A lot of my fights look like that. It looks like the guy is handling me and then all of a sudden he gets caught... he just figured it out at that moment that he wasn't going to beat me up and soon he was going to catch the beating. That's how I always looked at it... They're trying so hard to keep me from getting back to my feet and fighting them. Everybody says they're going to stand but most of these guys have been wrestling since they've been two years old. You punch them in their face and natural instincts come in and that's for them to wrestle. This Marcus LeVesseur, I heard the rumors backstage that he was going to knock me out. He's had some clean knockouts. I've watched it when I was studying for him. But I wasn't scared. He's knocked out guys who were worse strikers than me. That's all that meant. So I know that once I smack him a couple of times, even if he's telling his training partners he wants to stand, instinct will kick in and he'll start trying to wrestle. I got to be prepared for that grappling and I feel I am now.

NWFS: UFC 148 is going to be huge, they're talking about over a million pay-per-view buys. What does that mean for you to be fighting on such a historic card?
McKenzie: Nothing truthfully. I mean of course it means something. It's amazing and a dream come true to fight in front of a big crowd, but I look at it as its nothing. It's just another opportunity to come up, to make life for me and my friends a little easier. So I'm just trying to take care of business. I'm not looking at it like 'check that off the bucket list'. It is in a way because when I got into fighting I always wanted to fight in front of the most people possible live. And there's like 18000 here and that jacks me up. I am excited for it, but at the same time I try and look at it like its nothing in a way. Not that it's nothing like I'm cocky, but I can't look at it like it's such a big deal and stress myself out. Everyone always tells me 'this is a big fight for you'. But every fight is a big fight for us. Our last fight is the most important. I'm fighting this guy for my life, every single fight. If there are three people watching me and I'm fighting another professional fighter in a cage or if there's 30,000, I fight the same way. I fight with every ounce of my being. I'm kill or be killed, you know.

NWFS: How do you approach fight week?
McKenzie: Just make sure my weight's on. Cut back on the sparring and the fighting hard. And let my body recover and let all the injuries that I've had from the training camp kind of heal. And get my hormones back up to get pissed off and angry to go in there and just bite some heads off. I let it build up a little bit, but not too emotional because I've done that in fights and lost my head. I try and stay calm at the same time. All life's a balance to me. It's definitely just a balance of hanging out with my friends and being calm, but I also spend time alone. Whether I go walk up a hill or just hang out in the hotel room. I like to draw pictures a lot and listen to music. That's about it.

NWFS: Any sponsors to thank?
McKenzie: Yes. Kaiwaa, Venum Fight, Training Mask, Fat Gripz, & Breakaway Lounge. I'm definitely going to do business July 7th. I'm really excited about it and to represent the Northwest!

Many thanks to Cody for making the time to speak with NW Fightscene. He will fight Chad Mendes on the main card of UFC 148: Silva vs Sonnen II on July 7th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The main card will be available on Pay-per-view.

More info on the event at UFC.com.

Cody is online on both Facebook and Twitter.