For UFC Fight Night 26's Matt Brown, when the phone rings, there's no discussion

Matt Brown thought for sure there would be time to relax. After all, with Jordan Mein in the rear-view mirror, certainly he could expect a short break. Then the phone rang.

“They called me to fight Thiago (Alves) less than a week after my last fight,” Brown told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio). “They were already ready to do it.”

Brown did what he always does. He said yes. After all, when you compete in the world’s biggest MMA promotion, you’d better be ready to go on a moment’s notice. A few weeks later, the phone rang again.

“When [Alves] got hurt, they just called me and said, ‘You’re fighting Mike Pyle,’” Brown recalled. “That’s pretty much all it was. They didn’t really give me much of a choice.”

And so it is for Brown, the 32-year-old Ohio native who has quietly pieced together a 6-1 mark in his past seven appearances. A cast member of 2008's “The Ultimate Fighter 7,” Brown started quick in the UFC with a 4-1 octagon mark in his first five official appearances. But a 1-4 run left him just one fight above .500 for his career, and his UFC future looked anything but certain.

Now things are completely different, and Brown is one of the hottest fighters in the UFC’s welterweight division. He returns to action at next week’s UFC Fight Night 26 event, which takes place at Boston’s TD Garden and airs on the soon-to-launch FOX Sports 1 channel.

In Pyle (25-8-1 MMA, 8-3 UFC), Brown (17-11 MMA, 10-5 UFC) faces another 170-pounder on an impressive run with seven wins in his past eight appearances. Further complicating the issue for Brown, he’s spent plenty of time training with Pyle during previous trips to Las Vegas, and facing such a familiar foe didn’t work out so great for him the first time around.

“The only time I’ve ever fought somebody that I’ve trained with before was Amir Sadollah when we fought on the show, and I didn’t really feel 100 percent comfortable in that fight because of that,” Brown said. “But I can tell you that the fact that I’ve been through that experience once before, I think it will help me handle it a little better the second time around.”

If he’s right, Brown could be in line for a bigger fight than ever seemed possible as recently as just two years ago. Just how big remains to be seen, but Brown said his sights are set firmly on the top, no matter how humbly he may go about his job.

“I understand my division is very stacked, and the fact is there are guys that are probably still ahead of me, even after beating Pyle,” Brown said. “But of course, the whole goal is to be the champion, so I’m going to do everything I can to get it. But I’m not really one to go out there and beg for things. I want to earn everything that I get, and I wan to fight for what I deserve, you know?”

And for Brown, that means always answering the phone.

“It is what it is,” Brown said. “It’s what I signed up for, to fight, so why would I turn down a fight when I signed up to fight?”

For the latest on UFC Fight Night 26, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.

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