"As far as what it means for my career, it’s just another fight," Franklin said during last week's media conference call. "I try not to put a lot of weight on fights in particular like that, like a must-win situation and all that kind of stuff. I just prep for this fight the same way I prep for any other fight. And as far as Wanderlei goes, as an opponent, I mean this is a great opportunity for me to fight another great fighter.

"But that’s going real well. I feel great for this fight. I’m inside 2 weeks, and I’m at the point where I’m just – I’m done training and I’m ready to – I’m ready to fight. I want to get this one over with."

Franklin also talked about his relationship with his former rival, Anderson Silva, who helped train him for this fight.

"Anderson and I, we’ve been friends since after the second fight he and I had together," Franklin noted. "On several occasions, we tried to train together, but scheduling wise it just didn’t seem to work out. As far as his manager contacted myself, contacted me several weeks ago and asked me if I was interested in coming out there and training for this fight. So I spoke to my coaches about it, (Rob, Neil) and (Matt), and asked them what they thought, got their opinion on it. And they all thought that it was a good idea, so I decided to head out to L.A. and train for a couple of weeks with my coaches. And that’s about the extent of the relationship other than the fact that I mean we’re just – we’re just friends. And that seemed like a good resource for this fight in particular.

"There was no – I know that there was some Internet chatter between Anderson and Wanderlei going on, and all this had – the decision to go out there and train at that camp had happened way before any of that – any of that stuff had ever happened. You know I tried to keep myself out of any of the you know personal battle that was going on between the two of them. I was just looking for a good resource to use to help me prep for this fight. And you know I learned a few things while I was out there, and, all in all, it was a decent camp."

As for his feeling towards his Wanderlei Silva, Franklin was quick to note that he has no hostility towards 'The Axe Murderer', saying "I have no personal vendetta against Wanderlei. There have been several occasions where actually he and I had spoken to each other about training together before he had his camp opened in Las Vegas. And, of course, that didn’t come to fruition, and now we’re pitted against each other.