“I thought I had secured rounds one and two and in round three, I didn’t want to get knocked out like I did against Ricardo Ramos,” said Zahabi, who got caught with a spinning back elbow two minutes into the final round of his clash with the Brazilian Ramos at UFC 217. “I was so sure I was going to win that fight that I just went bonkers in round three and ended up getting KOed by something that is low probability; it’s only happened a couple times in the UFC.
“So, in the last fight, I was like, ‘I’m pretty sure I banked rounds one and two; let me get one win under my belt and next fight, I’ll go crazy.’ I shouldn’t have coasted; it’s on me. I shouldn’t have done that, and I’ve learned my lesson.”
Believing he was ahead on the scorecards and wary of getting caught with another big shot that would put him out, Zahabi fought more conservatively in the final five minutes and ultimately landed on the unhappy side of a unanimous decision verdict.
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“In the back of my head, I was still worried about the knockout and the lingering effects,” he admitted. “As soon as the fight ended and I felt totally fine and like I barely got hurt, I was so upset walking backstage and I told my brother, ‘I can’t believe I took my foot off the gas pedal in round three.’
“I should have just kept doing what I thought was winning me the fight,” continued Zahabi, who trains under his brother, Firas, at Montreal’s Tristar Gym. “The problem is that all of a sudden, in the fight, I started saying, ‘You got away with two rounds of not getting knocked out,’ instead of saying, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing.’
“I started thinking of it as ‘don’t get hurt’ because in the fight before with Ramos, it happened in the third, so there was kind of some PTSD-type stuff in the moment.”
