“It was miserable up there,” he said. “It was kind of like the Army of Darkness cabin in the middle of the woods kind of s**t, where bears were crossing and stuff. And man, it was hot. We had no fans, no laundry, and it was the best thing I could have ever had. It was closest to camping as we possibly could have had, bonding with my family, bonding with my team and hunting bears. We were getting, not chased by bears, but we were running into bears left and right out there. So it wasn’t full of s**t, being like, ‘Hey, yeah, if you see a bear, run the other way.’ No, it’s being real; if you see a bear, take his back.”
How To Watch UFC 291: Poirier vs Gaethje 2
Ferguson laughs, and he sounds good. Positive, excited to fight, excited to get back in the win column for the first time since he stopped Donald Cerrone in June 2019. Four years is a long time without getting your hand raised, and while Ferguson’s losses came against a Murderers Row of Justin Gaethje, Charles Oliveira, Beneil Dariush, Michael Chandler and Nate Diaz, the 39-year-old is uninterested in silver linings or moral victories.
“I’ve always been in fighter mode,” Ferguson explains. “What I had to do is acclimate. I had to really acclimate towards what I wanted, towards what I was feeling, how I was feeling, and not really worrying about anybody else. And my wife, I’ll be real with you, she’s been a f**king G, just by helping me and being on point and letting me know, ‘Hey, you know what? Don’t worry about this. We got this.’ And I could trust this and delegate instead of having to worry about everything. When the pandemic hit, I felt like I was just taking care of just so much s**t. My business was the only one that didn’t shut down time during the pandemic.
UFC 291 COUNTDOWN: Full Episode | Poirier vs Gaethje | Błachowicz vs Pereira
“So, we all went through that, but it was hard for me to bounce back,” he continues. “My whole entire team disappeared; they had to go worry about what was important, which is family. And so I had to find out how to get back to where I needed to be and it took me a while and a lot of pain, but if anybody could take it, it was me.”
