“I always thought that I had it, but until you get put in those situations, you don’t really know if you have the dog, heart, whatever you want to call it,” Brundage said. “I always felt that I had it because I feel like I’ve always been an underdog, just from college wrestling. I’m from South Carolina, wrestling’s not a big sport here, it’s not super prestigious to wrestle out of South Carolina, and I was able to work really hard. And if you’re the underdog, you’re gonna take your lumps and you’re gonna have heart if you’re gonna take your lumps. So I don’t know if it gives me an advantage, but going into a fight, I know that if I lose, I truly got beat. I didn’t quit on myself, I didn’t quit on my coaches and my team and my family. If I lose, someone just got the better of me, and I think there’s peace in knowing that sometimes that happens.”
Especially at the UFC level, where everybody can fight. But it’s those intangibles that Brundage has already displayed that give him an edge that he hopes will take him to a world title one day. And yeah, he’s thinking about the future, along with the immediate prospect of Saturday’s fight.
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Call him a middleweight multitasker.
“I’m always looking ahead,” Brundage said. “I’m never looking past anybody, but I’m always like, ‘Well, if I do this, then this can happen,’ and I do it both ways. ‘Well, if I lose, then I’m gonna have to do this.’ I always play out all these scenarios, probably just a byproduct of being bored in the house. (Laughs) So I definitely thought about next year. If I go out there and have a good performance and go 3-0 in the year, I’m not far off from that Top 15.”
A scary thought? Not for Brundage, who is just fine with that forecast.
