The mental game is a huge aspect of fighting. Just ask former UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia who famously said “Half of this game is 90% mental.” Now while those numbers might not exactly add up, you know what he means.

Just look at Mike Tyson’s career during his prime. His opponents were beat long before they even got into the ring with him. It wasn’t until Buster Douglas came along that people finally realized he wasn’t unbeatable and perhaps even in Tyson’s mind he came to that same realization and never really performed the same afterwards.

In the following fight video of an MMA fight from somewhere in Russia, we see a fighter mentally break in the ring as he pretends to get knocked out from a punch that doesn’t even land.

You can tell just looking at their physiques during the stare down, the black gentleman doesn’t even look like he exercises regularly, let alone trains for an MMA fight.

Perhaps he was brought in to lose and it is possible this fight was rigged in some way but it is more likely that he was simply looking for a way out and went down from a punch that never connected. He probably realized he was in far over his head and just wanted the experience to be over.

You can clearly see in the slow motion replay that he never gets hit once and simply falls down and pretends to be knocked out. It is a pretty shameful display from someone who should never have been allowed to compete in the first place.

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MMA fighter Chael Sonnen has openly talked about his similar issues with the mental aspect of fighting where he could be dominating a fight then strangely looked for a way out and got caught in submissions. He sought a sports psychologist for his issue which he talked openly about on longtime UFC commentator Joe Rogan’s podcast.