And he didn’t look too shabby before the end, either.
“Yeah, I just watched it a couple days ago and not to toot my own horn, but I looked pretty good,” he laughs. “I looked damn good.”
It was the kind of performance Rodriguez needed after he broke a two-fight winless streak with a first-round knockout of Marcin Prachnio last August, and while he didn’t get the result he wanted against Herman, being busy and happy with his performances in the last year has him satisfied with what took place in 2020.
“2020 was really good,” he said. “I think one of the big things to it is that I didn’t let any external distractions get to me. I just did what I needed to do. I focused on what I could control and didn’t give a f**k about things I can’t. I continued training to be the best I can be, and that’s what I did.”
It wasn’t always that way for Rodriguez, but it’s the way he lives his life these days.
“A lot of things, I would catch myself getting invested into them and then I had to stop and reel myself out,” he said. “And you get better at it. Now, if there’s something I can’t do anything about or change, I’m on to the next. I don’t got time to focus on that. I just focus on things I can control.”
