This past weekend at ‘UFC Fight Night: Nashville’, UFC welterweight veteran Jake Ellenberger stepped into the Octagon with welterweight prospect Mike Perry for a highly anticipated showdown.
For Ellenberger, he was looking to return to the win column following a controversial TKO loss to Jorge Masvidal, where he was declared TKOd after he got his big toe stuck in the cage. For Perry, he too was looking to return to the win column to bounce back from his first professional loss, where he dropped a unanimous decision to Alan Jouban.
Unfortunately for Ellenberger, a crushing elbow from Perry put ‘The Juggernaut’ to sleep in the second round, handing him his second straight loss.
Now, Jake Ellenberger spoke to MMAFighting to discuss the recent loss, saying:
“It’s tough. I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine a couple of nights ago, and it was like, man, I’ve fought some really good guys. And I’ve come up short, or had a tough fight. For me, this fight, this was probably the best I’ve ever felt. Like pre-fight, warm-up, everything was on. I felt great. Because I’ve had fights where I wasn’t warmed up, or I didn’t feel good, or the first round came too quick.
“In the first round, I even felt good. I was like, let’s get this in the second round, let’s get it to the third, because I knew as the fight went on I could start to explore my transitions, more takedowns, that sort of thing. But it’s one of those things where you wake up and you’re like, fuuuck. It’s definitely a hard pill to swallow.”
“Win or lose, whether you get your hand raised or not, the sun rises the next morning,” Ellenberger said. “It’s really not as different as you think. People play so much into that, that egocentric kind of build-up — and I mean, it’s an egocentric sport, and I understand it — you can’t pay too much attention to it one way or the other. It’s like playing a very volatile market. You put your life savings in how you feel man, you’re going to wake up very disappointed.”
This article first appeared on www.BJPenn.com on 4/29/2017.