Matt Brown is one of the well-known MMA fighters who’s always ready to take short-notice fight offers from UFC. And while “The Immortal” knows that there are advantages to it, he believes young fighters in the industry must be cautious in doing it.
Calling other fighters to step into a fight is not new in the UFC, especially when a talent has to withdraw due to training injuries and other reasons. Brown is a witness to it, allowing him to experience the actual advantages and disadvantages of such a move. Now 42, Brown admitted that he made the mistake of doing it multiple times during his early years in the business. And for him, this is something new MMA fighters should never do in a rush.
“I think some people, whether for good or bad, don’t really zoom out and they hear an opportunity [and they say] yeah, let’s go fight,” said on The Fighter vs. The Writer. “I think I made that mistake a lot when I was younger. I took a lot of short-notice fights. Now the advantage of it, it does earn you favor with the UFC. I think it earned me favor and earned me a lot of respect and it came in handy at times. [But] what I would suggest to guys is zoom out. Look at your career as a marathon and not as a sprint.”
With this, Brown thinks the presence of the right people around a fighter is crucial at all times in order to come up with the right decision. The veteran has them but admitted to making the mistake of ignoring the guidance offered even by his own coaches.
“…You’ve got to have a couple of guys that are just confronting the truths of the situation,” the fighter shared. “Like dude, you’re not doing enough grappling, you’re not doing enough conditioning. You’re dropping your hands too much. No, you shouldn’t take that fight. You’ve got to have somebody around you that puts their foot down and tells you the honest truth.
“I can think of specific examples where I took fights on short notice and my coaches told me not to. I didn’t listen and lost the fight and looking back saying damn, I should have listed to those motherf******.”
In the end, Brown reminded newcomers that while taking a fight on short notice could make them look tougher, the fight’s result is the only detail that will linger in their records and the fans’ memories. And given that the bout is taken without sufficient preparation, he underscored that the chance of losing is high. And when that happens, the audience won’t care whether you took the fight prepared or not.
“No one knows, cares or remembers what type of notice you got for that fight,” Brown said. “How prepared you were, no one knows, cares or remembers whether you had an injury. None of this s***. The only thing people are going to remember a week from now, if not a year from now or whatever, they see it on Tapology, Sherdog or whatever, they see the record.
“They don’t see all the asterisks next to it that you could be putting. I could put all kind of asterisks next to so many of my fights, wins and losses. I’m sure my opponents could do the same but no one sees, knows or cares about that s***.”
