Six months later, he suffered another loss on the scorecards, this time to Josh Emmett. And six months after that, a third straight decision loss to Movsar Evloev left the talented Hawaiian desperate to fix whatever was keeping him from performing at his best inside the Octagon. He’d never lost consecutive fights before, and now he’d dropped three straight, and four of his last five.
“I always thought it was just that I had to work harder, but I’m already working as hard as is humanly possible, and I couldn’t figure it out,” explained Ige, who followed up his win over Jackson with a hard-fought unanimous decision victory over Nate Landwehr at UFC 289 in Vancouver. “I couldn’t figure out why things weren’t clicking, and after the Korean Zombie fight, going through that — putting all that pressure on myself, becoming a dad, failing — I felt like I had to get it back right away.
“I went into the Josh Emmett fight and I remember walking out in the T-Mobile Arena numb — no feelings at all. With the knowledge I have now, I was depressed, but I didn’t know it. I was just going through the motions and showing up, doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing. Go through that fight, close fight, didn’t go my way, but again I just felt like I had to get one back because I had never lost two-in-a-row, and I can’t lose three-in-a-row, so I’ve got to get another one and I’m healthy.
