This past weekend, former UFC light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans stepped into the Octagon on the main card of UFC 209 where he made it his middleweight debut against Olympic Judoka Dan Kelly.

Kelly picked up an impressive unanimous decision win over the former champ as he repeatedly landed significant strikes on ‘Suga’, who didn’t really appear to find his groove until the third round. With the disappointing loss to Kelly, many were wondering if Evans would retire from MMA in the midst of his 3-fight skid.

He spoke on The Luke Thomas Show about the situation:

“You don’t want to sit and overthink every little thing because you can’t figure it all out,” Evans told “The Luke Thomas Show” on SiriusXM Rush 93. “The best thing to do is get back out there and to fight again and to find that competitive rhythm and find that flow. Once you find that flow it’s like, ‘Ah, yeah, this is my flow. This is my routine. This is what I need to do because this is the kind of fighter I am, this is the kind of competitor I am.’

“When you find a competitive mojo, then it’s easy to rattle off a couple wins and fulfill the potential. When you don’t have that competitive rhythm it’s hard.”

“I’ve got to get this off me,” Evans said. “I’ve got to get this loss off me. I know I’m better than this. I know I’m a better competitor than this, and I want to go out there and fight as much as I can. That’s just the truth of the matter. I’m 37 years old and I don’t know how long my body is going to hold out to do what I love to do.

“I want to compete as much as I can until I can’t compete anymore. And when I can’t compete anymore, I can’t compete anymore. But at the end of the day, I still feel like I can compete, and that’s what I want to do. I want to compete.”

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 3/9/2017.