Weidman: How I stopped losing
Chris Weidman: “I was that talented kid who wasn’t working as hard as he could, and when you’re not working as hard as you can, you don’t feel like you deserve to win.”
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UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman recently penned a long and compelling column for The Players Tribune, ahead of his fight with Vitor Belfort at UFC 187 on Saturday.
I was a wrestler training for the Olympics. I got injured before the trials, and the injury forced me to miss the 2008 Games. At that point, I had a decision to make: I could continue wrestling and wait to try out for the 2012 Olympics, or I could try mixed martial arts.
I decided to try three months of Jiu Jitsu, and I just fell in love with it. I realized pretty quickly that this is what I was meant to do. I grew up in a rough neighborhood, so I fought a lot. Even when I was wrestling, if I lost a match, I always thought, That guy would never beat me in a fight…
So I chose MMA — but if I wanted to be successful, I had some big changes to make.
Truth is, I lost to a lot of guys (in collegiate wrestling) I should’ve beaten. I wasn’t mature enough to put in the work it took to win a national championship. I was that talented kid who wasn’t working as hard as he could, and when you’re not working as hard as you can, you don’t feel like you deserve to win. I never had that true confidence going into a match where I thought, There’s no way this guy’s beating me, because I worked way too hard.
And that’s what I changed when I got into MMA. I decided I was gonna be the hardest-working kid in the room. I wasn’t gonna be that kid who’s not reaching his potential or not making the most of his ability. I put on this face of a hard-working, tough, gritty wrestler — which isn’t at all what I was, I just wanted to create that illusion. And after about a year of pretending to be the hardest worker in the room, my habits changed and I became that person. I basically faked it till I made it. Knowing that there’s nobody out there working harder than I am gave me the confidence that I couldn’t be beaten. And that’s when I stopped losing.
I knew that to be the best, I had to beat the best, and Anderson Silva was the champion in my weight class. I used that same fake it till I make it strategy to convince myself that I could beat Anderson Silva. From the very beginning, every time I trained for a fight, I didn’t train to beat the guy I was fighting. I trained to beat Anderson Silva. I was still so new to the sport, and he was this unbeatable mythical figure to me, so I told myself, He’s human. He can be beaten, and you have what it takes.
And I started believing it, even though nobody else did.
I wouldn’t even be excited for a third fight against Silva. After winning those two fights and having beaten Lyoto Machida to defend the middleweight title since, I need competition. And today, it’s clear to everyone what I’ve known to be true all along: Anderson Silva will never beat me.
The competitor in me instantly searches for new goals. Now, I want to clear out my weight class. I want to demolish the next guy, and the next guy and the next guy. I want to beat all the fighters people think I can’t beat. I want to retire undefeated. It just doesn’t end.
Which brings me to my current focus: I want to completely dominate Vitor Belfort on Saturday. I want to make a statement and let everybody know that I’m head and shoulders above everybody else — that I dominate this weight.
Once again, I have doubters. Vitor Belfort is very powerful and strong, and a lot of people think he poses a big problem for me. So I’ll just have to prove everybody wrong again. I wanna fight him, and I wanna beat him. And I can, and I will.