Latest news with #Cerrone
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
'My biggest regret is that I didn't enjoy any of it': How Alexander Volkanovski stumbled into MMA's most inconvenient truth
Alexander Volkanovski enters Saturday's UFC 314 main event with a fresh perspective and a second chance at UFC gold. (Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports) (USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Connect / Reuters) The famed fight trainer Greg Jackson used to say that he had a steady pre-fight routine with Donald 'Cowboy' Cerrone, one of his star pupils. The way it would work is, they'd get into the locker room on fight night and Cerrone would all at once realize what a stupid thing it was to go out and fight another man in a cage for other people's entertainment. How awful. How insane. He didn't know why he'd ever thought this was a good idea, but he was done with it now. He'd do this last one only because he'd already agreed to it and there were a bunch of people out in that arena waiting to see him, but after this? Never again. Advertisement OK, Jackson would tell him as they pulled on the gloves and began to warm up. Last one. Retirement starts tomorrow. Let's go out and make this one count. That was what it took, was this shared fiction. Because as much as Cerrone wanted to fight, he also hated it. And why wouldn't he? It's incredibly stressful. Almost anything can happen to you in that cage, from physical catastrophe to personal humiliation. He kept signing up to do it because a part of him simply couldn't stand not doing it, but he also struggled to get himself to like any of it. This is not an unfamiliar problem for many fighters. Even great ones, like former UFC featherweight champ Alexander Volkanovski, have had to learn how to enjoy the process as much as the result. 'It's hard, and I feel like it's just happened now,' Volkanovski told Uncrowned ahead of his fight for the 145-pound championship against Diego Lopes at Saturday's UFC 314 event in Miami. 'I've always been this guy to build up to the fight, win it, then kind of get emotional in the relief of being done, but not properly enjoy it as a human being. I've said this to myself [while] getting ready for this one, that I'm really looking forward to getting my hand raised and being Alex Volkanovski soaking up that moment, not just Alex the fighter, telling people what I think they want to hear.' Advertisement It sometimes surprises people to learn that even professional tough guys aren't necessarily all that excited to go get into a fist-fight on live television. Even someone like Nick Diaz, who seemed to many like a born fighter without an ounce of fear, once described himself as a 'dark and dim person' during the period leading up to a scheduled fight. 'I just despise these people who are happy to go out there,' Diaz told ESPN in 2021. '… That's fake. If it's not fake, you must be crazy.' Chael Sonnen grew up on wrestling mats and then spent almost his entire adult life in MMA. He logged nearly 50 professional fights, but never got to a point where he could enjoy it while he was still in it. Advertisement 'It makes me envious that people did get there,' Sonnen said. 'My biggest regret is that I didn't enjoy any of it. It was always so stressful.' At the same time, many of the same fighters who struggled to enjoy the experience also struggled with its absence. 'You're dying to get a fight, with your fingers crossed,' Sonnen said. 'The second you get a call and you find out who the opponent's going to be, then everything is different. Every breath you take is just different. Every bite of food. Everything is different when you have that actual person. And then you get through with them, whether you won or lost, you sit around wondering what's next and you can't wait to do it again, and then you get the opportunity and it's the last thing you want while being the number one thing you want. It's very strange.' This is partly what Volkanovski was trying to get at following his knockout loss to Islam Makhachev at UFC 294 in 2023. He had a tendency to jump right back into training camp and go hunting for his next fight too soon, he said, because his mind tended to go to some 'dark places' otherwise. It was a moment of rare vulnerability that, to some, made Volkanovski more relatably human. Others — especially some fellow fighters — criticized him as mentally weak. After consecutive losses, Volkanovski took time to reflect and recharge. (Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports) (USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Connect / Reuters) 'That was something where, if I wasn't concussed, it probably wouldn't have been my choice to share that with everybody,' Volkanovski said. 'But it was emotional. It was a vulnerable time in my career. Even though I was champion, it was like I just didn't understand it.' Advertisement Part of the issue for Volkanovski was that he'd kept himself so frantically busy as champion that he never gave himself a chance to stop and reflect, much less enjoy the fruits of his labor. As soon as one fight was over he was already looking to the next one. Over time, he said, he felt he was losing any sense of identity outside his life as a fighter. 'It's a hard place to find, that balance,' Volkanovski said. 'If you want to be the best in the world, that's a sacrifice you're going to have to make. I don't know if you can balance that. Maybe some people can, and good on them. But I kind of told myself, I don't have time for anything else. No more me time. And I was fine with that, because I think that's how you have to be to become a champion. I'm happy that I was that guy for so many years, but I'm also happy I got a break. Now I feel like I have a better understanding of it.' At age 36, Volkanovski now has another chance to reclaim the 145-pound title he lost to Ilia Topuria in 2024. With Topuria moving up to lightweight, Volkanovski faces the hard-charging contender Lopes with the vacant featherweight title on the line in the UFC 314 headliner. It's given him a new perspective, he said, to have fresh life breathed into his title hopes at a time when he finally feels like he knows what to make of this hectic life. Advertisement 'It's hard, and a lot of it comes down to that fighter's identity,' Volkanovski said. 'You feel like you have no real purpose if you're not doing this. Feeling your time running out, you want to make the most of it and enjoy it more.' One fighter who seems to have cracked that code somewhat is Volkanovski's longtime City Kickboxing teammate, Dan Hooker. During his memorable battle with Mateusz Gamrot at UFC 305 last summer, the UFC corner cam caught Hooker telling his coaches between rounds that he 'love[s] this s***,' as the blood was streaming down his face. Dan Hooker was smiling through the blood during his split-decision win over Mateusz Gamrot. (Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC) (Jeff Bottari via Getty Images) But that joy in the heat of battle wasn't always so accessible to him, Hooker said. It took years of experience — and some forced time off due to injuries — in order to gain that perspective. Advertisement 'When you're young and bullheaded, you just take everything for granted,' Hooker said. 'When you're injured or you're unable to compete, you don't take it for granted anymore. You realize that there's nowhere else you can get this chance to test your mind and body to the extremes the way you do here. … You work so hard to get in those situations, to feel that way, to be that tired and that exhausted and that mentally drained, and you work so hard to feel that level of emotion. 'I used to just try to get through the fight without enjoying it, but then I'd realize that I'm always depressed right after the fight, waiting for the next one,' Hooker continued. 'You start to realize that this is the good part and you're missing it by just trying to get done with it.' Talk to retired fighters and you realize there's something to this. Once it's all over, they miss the feeling of walking through that curtain into a packed arena. The nerves and stress they felt at the time get smoothed over in their memories. That rush of individual combat, with so much on the line, is a feeling they can't get anywhere else. Some only seem to realize it after it's been taken from them. Maybe it's because he's now closer to the end of his career than the beginning, but Volkanovski doesn't want to miss those moments anymore. He doesn't know how many more he'll get, and it took years of suffering and sacrifice just to get here. He wants to make sure he enjoys it while he can, he said. 'This time, I can't wait to go out there, do my thing, and then properly enjoy it as a human being,' Volkanovski said. 'I've been able to have that break and evolve as a person. Now I'm really looking forward to the chance to do this, to get that belt wrapped around my waist, and really enjoy it as myself, as a person.'
USA Today
19-02-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Ranked UFC veteran ready to welcome Donald Cerrone back to octagon
Stephen Thompson likes the idea of a potential fight with Donald Cerrone. Cerrone (36-17 MMA, 23-14 UFC) recently announced that he has re-entered the UFC's drug-testing pool and plans to come back from retirement for two more fights. A longtime UFC veteran himself, Thompson (17-8-1 MMA, 12-8-1 UFC) thinks a fight with Cerrone makes sense. 'I'm thinking April, May time, I think would be cool just because I'm a huge fan of Cerrone, and he comes from that old school era that I kind of came from almost 13, 14 years ago,' Thompson said on the 'OverDogs Podcast'. 'So, it's cool that he wants to jump back out there. 'I thought it would be awesome if he doesn't want to cut the weight to 155 maybe to make that fight at 170. I thought it would be really cool to have two veterans like that step back out there and face off against each other, but nothing booked yet. But that's what I'm kind of shooting for, that April, May time.' 'Still on the grind' 'Wonderboy' has been fighting a slew of top contenders in the past decade but now finds himself having lost four of his past five and back-to-back stoppage losses to Shavkat Rakhmonov and Joaquin Buckley. That being said, the former two-time UFC welterweight title challenger still feels like he can compete at a high level. 'I didn't win my last fight or even the one after that, but we're still on the grind. We're not giving up,' Thompson said. 'I think I got it. I feel just as fast as I did 10 years ago, feel just as good, just like riding a bike, but I do spend more time on making sure that the body is feeling right. 'With massage therapy, with the recovery, the ice bath, maybe taking that day off where I'm not grinding that hard. Maybe I'm working just technique and just flowing, giving the body ample time to heal up, and I think that's crucial.'
