Rashad Evans hopes of getting back to winning ways against Dan Kelly in his middleweight debut at UFC 209 on Saturday night failed to materialize, but the 37 year-old isn’t ready to hang up his gloves just yet.
Evans lost out by split decision to the 39 year-old, unranked Kelly, and that takes is current losing streak to three fights, while looking through a broader lens, he’s lost five of his last seven fights.
It’s all a far cry from early in his career when he stayed undefeated for his first fourteen fights, culminating with winning the UFC’s light-heavyweight title, but though he now seems a shadow of his former self, ‘Suga’ believes there’s still hope he can turn things around and get back into his groove.
“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.”
Evans is realistic enough to know that his career isn’t going to go on indefinitely as it’s only being a matter of time before his aging body starts to give out on him, but until then his plan is to keep trying to reverse his fortunes in the Octagon.
“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.”
