Even with the relatively dominant win, Dawson was apologetic afterward and said no performance could take away the scar of missing weight. The incident caused him to reflect on his habits outside of fight camp and what came from that was a revamped dedication to nutrition.
“I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. I don’t do anything really outside of training and staying at home, so my vice is eating all the time,” Dawson said. “Eating whatever I want whenever I want, and I’m still young, but I’m getting older. As I get older, I get bigger. I used to be able to eat 10 packs of donuts and go train and the weight would come off easy. I can’t do that anymore, and it’s really opened my eyes to how much I can get away with. Now it’s like, ‘Hey, man. Let’s be professional about this.’”
Dawson said his dedication to clean eating helped him feel better throughout camp, and it also makes the once or twice a month cheat meals all the better. Talking to Dawson, it’s easy to see that he is the type of person who attacks any new habit with high levels of dedication. When he discovered the UFC in high school, he set his mind to becoming a champion, and all potential distractions evaporated on the spot.
Cutting out partying, drinking and drugs in high school is one thing, but as he climbed up through the local and regional scenes and found high levels of success, an occasional straying from the straight-and-narrow path would be more than understandable. Not for Dawson, though, who has kept his group around him small and focused toward his central goal.
“I realized I’m kind of a boring guy,” Dawson said. “I enjoy anime and Star Wars and playing video games. It’s really easy. I have very, very few friends that don’t do MMA, but sometimes, they’ll be like, ‘Hey, let’s hang out,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Cool, come to the gym.’ That’s where I hang out. My friends are at the gym. If you don’t train at the gym I’m training at, really, you’re not going to see a whole lot of me. I’m not hard to find, but people don’t want to have to go through what they have to, to find me. My circle has really stayed the same.”
Training out of Glory MMA in Missouri, Dawson takes pride in observing the veterans around him and learning from any mistakes they have made in the hopes that he can avoid those things as he chases a title. One of those cautionary tales is pushing too hard too fast and putting himself in a situation in which he might not feel fully prepared.
