Imagine being Justin Gaethje for a moment. Put yourself in the cage at UFC 300 in the final round against Max Holloway. Imagine looking over and seeing him standing there in his floral print shorts, politely asking for your presence in the center of the cage so the two of you can end your BMF title fight with a slugfest in the final seconds.
We all know what comes next. But at the time, Gaethje didn’t. What he saw was a last chance to win this fight. So he entered the fire, grateful for the opportunity his opponent gave him.
But the other part to consider is what Gaethje had already experienced at that point. When Holloway caught him diving into that kick at the very end of Round 1, there was an audible crunch from the side of the cage, like someone stepped on a dry twig. That was the sound of Gaethje’s nose breaking, we realized as we watched him reach out to put it back in place on the way to his corner.
Have you ever broken your nose? Because I did, and it definitely took me more than 60 seconds of recovery time before I felt like getting up and marching off toward more objects flying violently toward my face. Not only did Gaethje get off the stool when he was called, he went off in that second round and was promptly pinned in both eyes within a few minutes.
All this is to say: most people currently walking the planet? There’s no way they’re still there in the waning moments of Round 5, eager to engage in one last-second shootout with Holloway. Beyond just the toll of the physical pain and exhaustion, most of us would have simply been too discouraged by then to rush out there, fists in the air, still hoping to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. jerk.
Fighters must be optimists, as famed coach Greg Jackson once said. This doesn’t just mean that you can’t be the type who easily falls into defeatist thinking. It means you have to be so far on the other end of the spectrum that you’re almost delusional.
I found myself thinking about this earlier that night while watching Jiří Procházka in his UFC 300 undercard fight against Aleksandar Rakić. Almost immediately things seemed to be going badly for Procházka. Rakić tapped him in that first round and easily dodged his attacks. But when you looked at Procházka’s face, you never saw anything resembling doubt or even concern. He fought as if it never occurred to him that he could lose.
After stopping Rakić with an avalanche of unanswered strikes in the second, Procházka insisted on responding to Rakić’s claim that he was a ‘fake samurai’.
“That’s true, I’m not a samurai,” Procházka said in his post-fight interview with Joe Rogan. “I’m a boy from the Czech Republic. But we all have to live and be inspired by something. And these samurai ideas are in me.”
This brings to mind another Jackson pearl of MMA wisdom: most of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are not true. Whether you think you’re descended from ancient world nobility or an ancient warrior race, the facts are probably murkier and less romantic.
But if all these stories are going to be made up anyway, you might as well make up a story that’s going to help you in some way. For Procházka, the light heavyweight with the top button and the stoic look, the most helpful story is the way of the samurai. And if that lights the fire in him, why should it hold him back just because he was born centuries later on the other side of the world?
It’s easy to appreciate winners, especially in this sport. The images are so stark and clear. Those post-fight photos of Holloway celebrating in the foreground while Gaethje lies face down behind him and floats through the shadowy realm? You don’t need to know anything about martial arts to know who won and who lost.
Sometimes it’s a little harder to remember to appreciate the losers. It’s also essential, because without Gaethje’s dogged belief in himself, you don’t get legendary moments like Saturday’s. While it is fair and right for us to celebrate Holloway’s incredible victory, we must also take a moment to reflect on Gaethje’s role in it.
As Holloway later reminded us, it takes two BMFs to give us a great BMF title fight. And both men knew when they accepted the fight that sooner or later in this sport it will be your turn to wake up on the ground.
