Darren Elkins has fought the who’s who throughout his career, but still has the desire to continue evolving.

Elkins (25-9 MMA, 15-8 UFC) was able to snap a four-fight losing skid with a much-needed win submission of Eduardo Garagorri in November and looks to keep the momentum going when he meets Darrick Minner (26-11 MMA, 2-1 UFC) at UFC on ESPN 27 on Saturday.

At one point, Elkins had one of the most impressive runs in the division, until he ran into current UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski. So with a new wave of talent coming in at 145 pounds, the 37-year-old knows he has to keep improving or he’ll be left behind.

“I just love to compete,” Elkins told MMA Junkie. “At the end of the day, I’m doing what I love to do. I have other things I could be doing, I’m a union pipefitter so I have other things, other careers I can go into, but I just like the lifestyle of fighting. I like the training part of it, and I like to see how I compete with these guys. So I wake up every day, and I know these guys are improving so I have to improve too.

“I have to change some of my training tactics and keep trying to get better. That motivates me too because you watch the game from 11 years ago when I first got into it, it’s totally different. These guys are better athletes, there’s way more science behind it so I’m just trying to get involved in it as much as I can with the science.”

With a win over submission specialist Minner, Elkins is aiming to build back the momentum he once had when he was a perennial contender competing with the elite.

“There’s a lot of new guys, that’s exciting,” Elkins said. “All the new guys in the top 10, top 15, and I’m just trying to work my way back there. I got a while to get there, but I’d like to just get back to the top 15 and whatever opponents that one by one get me there, that’s what I want to do.”