Derek Brunson has competed with the middleweight division’s elite but believes silly errors have cost him victories.
He watched the UFC 243 main event last weekend between Robert Whittaker and Israel Adesanya, two guys he’s fought before. And Brunson could only think what might have been had he beaten either one of them.
“It was bittersweet,” Brunson said Tuesday during media day for Dominance MMA. “I don’t like to make excuses. We sign up for fights, and we go out there and fight, but a lot of the fights that I lost, it was kind of due to my dumbness. Just a little too aggressive, didn’t have the right mentality.”
Brunson faced newly crowned middleweight champ Adesanya in November 2018 and was never really able to find his groove. He lost a first-round TKO, in a fight that he believes he didn’t prepare well for.
But no excuses from Brunson, who’s taking all of this as a lesson.
“Even with the Israel fight, we had a hurricane, so I was without power for like two weeks,” Brunson said. “I didn’t train for like two weeks, and I had a pregnant fiancee, so it’s just a lot of things that come up that it’s not really worth sharing, because it don’t matter.”
Brunson (20-7 MMA, 11-5 UFC) now has won his last two fights and feels like a more refined version of himself. He credits that to the Hard Knocks gym in Florida, where he recently made the switch.
“You go out there, and you fight, and you win or you lose, but me personally, dealing with myself, I’m like man I know I can win these fights if I had the proper preparation,” Brunson said. “And switching up my training camps, and being in Florida at Hard Knocks, for like the last two camps has been really big for me. Really good training partners, really good coaching staff, and I feel that moving forward, we can make a really big impact.”
