It’s not an unusual result for UFC debutants who not only have to fight, but also have to get used to the bright lights, the media, and the paperwork that comes along with those three letters on their four-ounce gloves.
“For your debut, it’s kind of hectic,” Anglin admits. “You get there and fight week’s a little different because you’re running around and doing all this different stuff. You gotta go to the PI and take all the pictures and B-roll stuff, and I won’t have to do that again this time because they already got it all. So that’s nice. And I know what to expect as far as that goes and how they do it on fight day in the locker room.”
Yet despite all this, Anglin has no excuses for the loss. In his eyes, it just wasn’t his night.
“I went into that fight thinking I was fully focused and ready to go, so it didn’t really affect me that I know of,” he said. “Who knows, maybe this fight I go in and I fight completely different and it’s a great night for me, and then I can look back and go, ‘Okay, maybe that stuff did mess with me a little bit.’ But, right now, that last fight, I just wasn’t able to get going. It was not really how I fight, and I’m not sure why that happened.”
It’s a mature assessment of that first bout, one you don’t hear too often for any loss in any sport. The 28-year-old credits early lessons for that approach.
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“It’s probably just the way I was raised,” he said. “In wrestling and playing sports growing up, you lose a lot. I wrestled, played hockey and sometimes you have bad nights. Even in hockey, I would go out, feel great, play a great game, score three goals, and then the next night I would go out and play like s**t. The ride home, there were no excuses. You played like s**t, you just weren’t feeling it tonight. Move on and you’ll get ‘em in the next game.”
That doesn’t mean the losses don’t sting.
