Say you’re a pro fighter and, against all odds, it’s going incredibly well for you. You win your first fight. Then another and another. Every time they announce your professional record you get to hear those magical words — “…and 0” — at the end of the sentence.
You have yet to taste defeat and who knows if you ever will? The mounting evidence is beginning to suggest that maybe you cannot be beaten. You could be the next Khabib Nurmagomedov. Losing is, to you, purely a hypothetical.
Advertisement
Then … oops. It happens. You lose your first fight. The aura has been punctured. The hype balloon deflates.
If this sounds like Bo Nickal, who on Saturday night at UFC Des Moines lost his first fight after building up a 7-0 professional MMA record, then OK. But it could be anybody. In this sport, eventually it is almost everybody.
Once upon a time, it was Rashad Evans. The former UFC light heavyweight champion had 18 total MMA fights before he finally lost one. He won season two of “The Ultimate Fighter.” He knocked MMA legend Chuck Liddell clean out. He became a UFC champion at 205 pounds — the sport’s marquee division at the time — all without ever knowing what it was to lose a professional fight.
Then it happened. In his first defense of the light heavyweight title, he ran up against Lyoto Machida, who was also undefeated at the time. Slightly less than two full rounds later, he woke up on the canvas with a little number “1” in the loss column of his professional record.
Advertisement
“I thought I was indomitable,” Evans told Uncrowned. “I thought that I couldn’t be beat. And I really, when I would feel those nerves and everything before the fight, I didn’t really know what was on the other side of that as far as what could happen, because I had never experienced it. Once I lost, I understood. And I was kind of traumatized by it, to be honest.”
This is something you’ll hear from a lot of fighters, especially the ones who were deep into their careers before they ever lost a fight. Everybody gets nervous before going out there to get into a cage fight on live TV. But you get a different kind of nervous after you’ve experienced the ugly side of things.
Advertisement
“Once I knew what was on the other side, I was kind of paralyzed a little bit,” Evans said. “Just because now you have the anxiety of knowing what could happen. It overtook me, so I got a sports psychiatrist to be able to help me mentally, help me do different techniques in order to get my mind out of those red-light thoughts and into more of the achieving, I-can-do-this type of mentality.”
That post-loss anxiety can be a powerful force even when your first defeat doesn’t come on the biggest stage. Just ask BKFC heavyweight champ Ben Rothwell, who dropped his first fight via decision against Tim Sylvia, who would later become the UFC heavyweight champion.
Rothwell was still a teenager at the time, but he’d had eight MMA fights — all victories, though not all recorded as professional bouts on his record.
“In my mind, I was on a roll,” Rothwell said. “I’m like 8-0 and I’m taking on this Miletich [Fighting Systems] guy. And a month prior I had demolished somebody in Iowa City, and Tim was there. That’s the first time I had ever seen Tim. And I was just like, ‘Oh yeah, he’s big.’ But I was, I don’t know, kind of cocky, I guess. I was just smashing everybody. So I thought, ‘I’m going to smash that guy too.’”
I thought I was indomitable. I thought that I couldn’t be beat. I didn’t really know what was on the other side of that because I had never experienced it. Once I lost, I understood. And I was kind of traumatized by it.
Advertisement
Rothwell was in for some surprises against the bigger, stronger Sylvia. They went the distance, and he had opportunities to win, but by the time it was over and the decision was announced, Rothwell felt defeated in more ways than one.
“It was a big wake-up call,” Rothwell said. “I was 18 and it was the first time I felt like, ‘Oh, there’s somebody as tough as me? There’s a guy bigger and stronger than me?’ I was big for an 18-year-old, but Tim was [6-foot-8], 300 pounds, like a 25-year-old man at the time. I couldn’t just throw him around like I was used to doing. So it was a 15-minute hell of a learning experience. After the fight, I was just exhausted and had my first real black eye. I took a loss, but I was also just like, ‘Oh, this actually isn’t so easy.’”
As anyone will tell you, whether you’re a blue-chip prospect or a UFC champ or just some guy at an Extreme Challenge event in Davenport, Iowa, the most important thing about that first loss is what you do after. It’s what you take from it and how you apply it moving forward that will determine what it all means.
For instance, Anthony “Fluffy” Hernandez, who went from being undefeated to suffering two losses in his first three UFC fights, learned that some of the things he’d been doing with success on the regional circuit simply wouldn’t fly at the UFC level.
Advertisement
“I’d been going into fights hurt, just because I needed the money and I was in a bad place in my life and with my training, but I’d been getting away with it,” Hernandez said. “It had always worked out for me, so I thought I could keep doing it. I had to learn the hard way that you can’t say yes just for the money.”
Rashad Evans didn’t know what it meant to lose until he faced Lyoto Machida. (Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
(Josh Hedges via Getty Images)
For someone like retired UFC welterweight Matt Brown, it took a few losses to learn how to incorporate the lessons without letting the fear of future failure become a hindrance in itself.
“I obviously had enough losses to be able to figure this s**t out, right?” Brown said. “You should feel sad and feel depressed and let yourself feel all those emotions, but you also need the right mindset to move past it. I think Bo Nickal probably has that, coming from Penn State and all the great coaches there. He lost in wrestling before, so I think he’ll be fine. But you have to have the mindset where you’re not so attached to just the outcome. The wins and the losses can’t become your whole identity.”
Advertisement
But the thing about winning is that it can sometimes get in the way of growing. Losses force introspection, while victory papers over the holes in your game. Seeing nothing but positive outcomes can sometimes reinforce bad habits.
That’s something Evans realized only after the loss to Machida that cost him his title.
“What I started to understand was that my losses were baked into my wins,” Evans said. “You know what I mean? They were baked in there. Because when you win, you don’t think about all the mistakes that you made.”
This is what Evans would encourage a fighter like Nickal to do, he said. It was only after he lost for the first time that he went back and analyzed video of his own fights looking for the flaws even in the victories. That, he said, not only helped him think like his opponents would, but also helped him balance his confidence with humility.
“Your arrogance can get in the way,” Evans said. “And as much as I believe that Bo Nickal is a true talent, he had arrogance. He had a lot of arrogance, because winning does that to you. Success, it does that to you. When you feel like you can’t miss, that’s when you usually miss.”
