Considering that the husband and father was walking the beat on an overnight shift and putting his life on the line every time he had the badge on, that’s no surprise, but you have to ask anyway, because having 250-pound men swing hammers at him on a nightly basis in the Octagon is no piece of cake either. But the difference is that as a mixed martial artist, Daukaus is loving every minute of this.
For example, before his first UFC main event last December, Daukaus turned down nothing when it came to media obligations in promoting his bout against Derrick Lewis. The 32-year-old would go on to lose for the first time as a UFC fighter in Las Vegas a week before Christmas, and when it was over, he gave full credit to the Houston banger, but also felt that maybe, just maybe, he was a little scattered leading into the biggest fight of his career.
Fight By Fight Preview | UFC Fight Night: Blaydes vs Daukaus
“I’ve learned how to prioritize and say no to some of the things I was taken into,” Daukaus said. “There were certain interviews that were in the middle of my training sessions I would try to do, and I was giving other people extra footage and more access to what I was doing. I was falling in love with that stuff and really living in that moment of getting all the social media and everything like that when I should have been focusing more so on the task at hand. And it’s definitely gonna be different with this main event.”
This main event is a Saturday showdown with No.4-ranked Curtis Blaydes in Columbus, Ohio. And while Daukaus doesn’t want to repeat the same pre-fight scenario as he did against Lewis, that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy the whole process the first time around.
“Oh yeah, it’s super fun, obviously, but I’m the type of person that if I’m focused on one thing, that’s really what I have to focus on to accomplish that goal, and looking back on it now, if I’m being a hundred percent honest with myself as a professional, there were certain times leading up to that fight where I wasn’t completely focused. I’m not taking anything away from Derrick Lewis; he’s Derrick Lewis for a reason, and he does that to a lot of people, but I felt my head and my heart weren’t fully in there for some reason, and I’m not really sure why.”
