“You get right to the gate and you’re ready to fight, and then it’s like, ‘Nope, just kidding, it’s not happening, you can go home,’” he said. “I never realized how bad I wanted to get into a cagefight until they told me the day of that it wasn’t happening. (Laughs) It was a whole different feeling. But this is weird time.”
Stamann knows that in this sport, these things happen, and there’s really no one to blame. You just do your best to deal with the twists and turns and get ready for the next one. The 31-year-old is more gracious than many in accepting what he can’t change, yet despite that attitude, he still can’t wait to get into a fistfight this weekend.
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“I still want to punch everybody, but this game humbles you,” he said. “It really does. And I think if you’re really gonna succeed at a sport that’s so crazy and so ever-changing, you really gotta find the good stuff in everything. Otherwise, you’ll just drive yourself crazy. I’ve been lucky and I have a lot of really good people in my life, and they’re constantly reminding me that it could be so much worse. And they’re right, because it’s been worse. I didn’t come from a gracious place where I had everything. Life’s hard and it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, and if you decide to be an athlete, it’s real hard, and I’m not sure that everybody necessarily understands that.”
Given the break since his fight against Jimmie Rivera last year, when presented with a third chance to face Dvalishvili on Saturday, Stamann wasn’t interested, believing that the MMA Gods were playing tricks on him and “The Machine.”
“I’ve been scheduled to fight this guy twice, and this fight seems like it’s cursed, like something’s gonna happen, no matter what I do,” he said when asked about fighting Dvalishvili this time around. “I said, ‘So is there anyone else, any other possibilities?’ And then Merab starts showing up at Xtreme Couture, where I train, and he starts training with all my partners.”
