Thus far, Brundage has taken fights with Nick Maximov, Tresean Gore, Michal Oleksiejczuk and Sedriques Dumas on short notice. He left those fights with a 1-3 record. Granted, the loss to Maximov was a close one many believed could have gone the other way, and he halted Gore in less than four minutes, but the other ones point to a fighter who could have served himself better by waiting to have a full camp. But the wrestler’s mentality is that if you’re competing dozens of times over the course of a season, an occasional setback doesn’t really set you back too much.
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“In wrestling, I’m competing between 45 and 60 times a year,” he said. “And so, a loss doesn’t hold as much weight. I could lose in the tournament, go win six in a row and then come back and take third in the tournament and feel good about my day. But if you lose in MMA, you might be sitting on it for three, four months, and if you say no to fights, you might be sitting on it for six, seven months. So if there’s matchups that I think I like, and there haven’t been many that I haven’t liked so far (Laughs), I’ll take them.”
Fair enough, and that might be a good and bad habit, as well. As for the one habit from Brundage’s days on the mat that he wishes to eliminate, it’s the tendency to always have the foot on the gas, when easing up at certain times could produce a win without being in the line of fire.
