'I hated myself': How 12 fighters overcame the hurdles of their 1st loss

Warning: Story contains coarse language

Almost every MMA fight ends with a winner and a loser. Sometimes bouts end in draws or no contests, but usually one fighter walks away with a smile and the other with their head down.

Losing is difficult, but it's something almost every fighter endures at one point or another. Even the all-time greats - Georges St-Pierre, Anderson Silva, Demetrious Johnson, to name a few - fall short. That's what makes the accomplishments of undefeated UFC champions Khabib Nurmagomedov and Israel Adesanya so remarkable.

What's even more difficult than losing is losing for the first time. theScore spoke to a dozen fighters about the first time their hand wasn't raised at the end of a professional fight.

(Interviews edited for length and clarity.)

How did you feel immediately after the fight?

Josh Emmett
(UFC featherweight, lost to Desmond Green at UFC 210 in April 2017):
It was just a bunch of different emotions. I felt like I won that fight. I felt like I just got hometown'd. I guess I was more pissed than anything, because I thought I won two rounds out of three. I was angry. I was upset at myself, and that's what it all comes down to. I had definitely put in the work - I put in the work for every fight. I was angry at myself, angry I didn't try to do more.

Brian Kelleher
(UFC bantamweight, lost to Dan Cion at Cage Wars 5 in March 2011):
I was heartbroken and shocked. Especially knowing that when you go pro, your amateur record gets wiped out, you become 0-0. It's a clean slate, you start fresh. In your mind, you're gonna go undefeated. That's the dream. When I lost that fight, I was like, "Man, what just happened? I imagined this going so differently and moving forward, moving on up, and now I'm here facing defeat, right as I start my professional career."

Louis Smolka
(UFC bantamweight, lost to Chris Cariaso at UFC Cincinnati in May 2014):
I felt like I blew it. I was trying to beat Jon Jones' record for youngest UFC champion. I kind of had a shot. John Moraga had just beaten Chris Cariaso to get a title shot, so in my head, I was right there.

I think I took it lightly. Me and Russell Doane, on our way to the UFC, we would talk like, "Yeah, man, once we get to the UFC, they're never gonna be able to stop us. We're gonna take over." We really, truly believed that. It's partially just being young, inexperienced, not knowing what's out there. The naivety of youth got the better of me. I took him lightly, didn't really train for that fight. I was like, "It's Chris Cariaso, I'll walk through him. It's nothing." I made a classic mistake and I paid for it.

I was just so sick after the fight. I was like, "There goes my chance at greatness, at a legacy. There it goes, it's just slipping away from me." I didn't know what to do. I was so upset. I hated myself.

Gilbert Burns
(UFC welterweight, lost to Rashid Magomedov at UFC Sao Paulo in November 2015):
I felt bad. That sucked so much. Rashid, at the time, he was one of the best strikers in the UFC. He was 18-2 or something like that. I was just a grappler. That hurt a lot. The first loss is something you've never experienced. That was in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was in front of my country, my people. That one hurt a lot.

Vicente Luque
(UFC welterweight, lost to Felipe Portela at Capital Fight in June 2010):
I was just mad that I had lost. I was submitted in the third round. I was winning most of the fight. I was just like, "Man, I can't believe it happened. I can't believe he got me." I was just mad.

Mike Rhodes
(UFC veteran, lost to Brandon Thatch at RFA 7 in March 2013):
I was pretty hurt about it. But I was real with myself about it. I took that fight on three days' notice and I cut 24 pounds in three days. And I knew Thatch. He was touted as the No. 1 welterweight outside the UFC at that point. I knew it was a tough fight going into it. I just was upset at my performance, the way the fight went. I felt like I had the better opportunities, and I just got caught. It was definitely a tough pill to swallow.

Jared Gordon
(UFC featherweight, lost to Jeff Lentz at CFFC 48 in May 2015):
It was in a fight that I was actually winning. I got kneed in the face. It landed perfectly in my eye and shattered my orbital in a couple different spots. I had to have a huge plate put in my face. I was in the head trauma unit for six days. It was really bad. The doctors actually thought I lost my eye, because the nerve of the eye was in between the fractures. They said normally when they see that, you damage your eye, partial blindness or full blindness. So it was pretty rough. I didn't know if I would ever fight again.

I'd lost twice as an amateur, so I knew the feeling of losing. But that was my first loss as a pro, so I was really bummed out. It definitely took a toll on me mentally.

James Krause
(UFC welterweight, lost to Donald Cerrone at WEC 41 in June 2009):
I don't think anybody ever wants to lose or expects to lose. I'm damn sure not one of them. But at some point, you know you're probably gonna lose. It's just a matter of, "How can I prolong that and make it so it doesn't happen immediately?" To say that I expected to lose is 100% false, but I knew it'd be a very difficult fight. I took it on two weeks' notice against a guy that had just fought for the WEC title and arguably won the title. He was one of the hottest fighters in the game at that time.

Of course I was bummed out about it. Nobody likes losing, especially high-level competitors. Of course I was devastated. It was the first loss of my career, and it was unfortunate.

Gerald Meerschaert
(UFC middleweight, lost to Fernando Gomez at Freestyle Combat Challenge in January 2007):
I probably felt more positive, because I was too young and dumb to realize anything else. I just thought it was a real good adrenaline rush. I realized that I loved doing it and that I had a blast, but also that there was a lot of stuff I had to get a lot better at if I was gonna try to make a run at this.

Matt Bessette
(UFC veteran, lost to Bill Jones at Reality Fighting in January 2008):
I was fucking exhausted. I don't think I've ever been that tired in my life. This was back in 2007 when nobody really knew how to prepare for fights. There was no blueprint whatsoever. You just did what you thought was right. I didn't have any coaching before that. I wasn't part of a team. I ran five miles six days a week, and then the other day, I'd train for an hour and a half in jiu-jitsu. My martial arts was so rudimentary. I had no striking whatsoever.

Mentally, it was really difficult for me, because I knew everything that I could've been doing better. But I hung onto the fact that it was a bullshit decision, and I hung on too long.

How do you think you handled the loss?

Marvin Vettori
(UFC middleweight, lost to Bill Beaumont at UCMMA 40 in September 2014):
I remember I was back in the change room, and I was saying sorry to all my coaches. I was very sad for me, and I was like, "Fuck, I fucked it up." I was upset with myself, but I was also very disappointed to not have made my coaches proud. I was miserable in the change room. My dad came from Italy to watch me, and I was just saying sorry.

Luque: I would say I handled it poorly. That fight kinda traumatized me for a while after that. My next three or four fights, I came into the fights with a lot of fear of losing. I don't have fear of anything, I never have - of fighting or of my opponents. But for that period of time, right after my first loss, I had a lot of fear of losing, and that just made me perform much worse than I would've. Even though I won some of the fights after that, I still think that fear of losing was on my mind, and it bothered me a lot on fight night.

Gordon: I did what I could. I was actually a year and a half sober, and then I was in the hospital for six days getting IV pain meds. So I didn't really handle it that well, actually. I came home, I recovered for the next couple weeks or whatever, and then I relapsed. Started shooting heroin again. Definitely didn't handle it that well. I went on the worst run of my life. After taking pain meds for a week nonstop, I kinda got that feeling for using drugs again, and I just went back out.

Meerschaert: I think I handled it pretty well, actually. I was already training pretty hard, and the loss gave me even more drive to stay in the gym and really buckle down on what I was doing and make that my main focus. I didn't get really too down on myself.

Now, because I'm in the UFC, losses mean so much. But back then, it was easier to not be as hard on myself and just say, "OK, it was a loss, nothing I can do to change it, pick yourself back up and keep going."

Smolka: I saw a video of (Bellator veteran) Dave Rickels talking about how after his first pro loss he went into a bar, drank a bottle of whiskey, and passed out or whatever, and just went back to the gym. I kinda did that. I thought that was a super cool thing to do. It sounded real cool in my head. I went home, I drank as much of a fifth of Jack Daniel's as I could and I woke up in my own (vomit).

I did not handle it well. I don't recommend that to anyone. It's just reckless. It's just being a kid, not really knowing what's going on. I didn't know what I was doing. I thought drinking would fix my problems, and it's never going to do that for you. You're never going to find a real answer in alcohol.

Julian Marquez
(UFC middleweight, lost to Chris Harris at Bellator 150 in February 2016):
It's easy. I came into this sport knowing you're gonna win some, you're gonna lose some. I come from a wrestling background, and you can't win all your matches. It's just the way it plays out. If you try to get mad because you lose, then that's on you, man. To me, do I want to lose? No. But if I lose, I'm not gonna let it alter myself. It just drives into my core to make me train harder and want it more. It just means it's a chance to improve.

How did the loss impact you?

Kelleher: It motivated me to get better. I got back in the gym. I knew I was training with the right people. I was really excited to get that first victory now. It's almost like it took a weight off my shoulders, because I knew what it felt like to lose, so I didn't have any pressure to wonder what it feels like and to try to avoid losing.

Emmett: I was grateful for it. At the time, not at all. But when I sit back and look at it, it's great. It did tremendous things for my career. I was able to go down to featherweight finally, just because I lost and was like, "OK, this is the time, let's go down to featherweight like I initially planned." My first outing, I set three records at featherweight, and I got the opportunity to fight (Ricardo) Lamas. I did what I did to Lamas (first-round knockout), and I leapfrogged the division. Two fights and all of a sudden I was the No. 4 featherweight in the UFC.

Burns: The fight affected me in a very positive way. I developed a lot of my game. Back then, I was in love with jiu-jitsu, trying to be only a jiu-jitsu fighter in the UFC. After that fight, I said, "OK, I want to get better at stand-up. I don't want to depend on my jiu-jitsu." Now, overall, I'm a good fighter in every way. I can wrestle, I can grapple, I have knockout power, good boxing, I can kick. That changed the whole thinking about my career. That opened up so much.

Gordon: It was really depressing. I thought maybe I'm not good enough to fight at that level. I had to take a step back and reassess how I was training, who I was training with, what I needed to do differently. I knew I had the skills, I knew I was good enough, so I just had to change a couple things training-wise.

Marquez: After that fight, I sat down with my dad, and he said, "OK, you and I both know that if you stay here in Kansas City, you're not gonna do anything. You have an opportunity in Las Vegas - go out there and do something good. You have a friend out there where you lived at, you got a gym out there where you were training at." He said, "I need you out of my house by Friday."

I picked my stuff up, packed the car up, and drove all the way out to Vegas. I haven't looked back since.

Bessette: That was the single most important fight of my career. I'm glad that one happened early on, because it made me join an actual school. I realized early on that what I was doing was not right at all. I realized that I needed to actually train martial arts to get in shape for a martial arts competition.

Vettori: It was a stepping stone in my life, because after that fight, I welcomed the true fight. Before, I would get in, punch the guy, take him down, and finish him. But then I realized, you gotta be ready to go. The higher the level, the higher the challenge, you have to be prepared in any kind of situation in fighting. After that, I didn't care. If we have to go into a dogfight, we have to go into a dogfight.

Luque: I think it impacted me positively, in the sense that I had to deal with all of this in the beginning of my career. Maybe if I had been undefeated going into the UFC and had that first pro loss in the UFC, I would have to deal with all of this in the UFC and maybe get cut.

Rhodes: I think it had a great impact on me, honestly. When you're undefeated, there's so much pressure on you. You kind of put it on yourself. And that's why you don't see that many undefeated fighters. Once I got that loss, it sucked, but after that, it became more real, like, "Yeah, you can lose. You're not this invincible tank of a dude who's gonna run through everybody. You're gonna have adversity." That's something that I've always dealt with in my life, so I let it fuel me.

At this point in my career, I have more losses than I would like, but each one propelled me in a different way or taught me something that has allowed me to be a better fighter than I probably would have been if I had just continued to win.

Smolka: I've been upset with myself since. Honestly, I still hate myself. I feel like that was a super winnable fight for me. I still hate myself to this day for it. I hate myself. That's the best way I can put it: I hate myself.

How did you manage to bounce back?

Kelleher: It reignited a flame in me that maybe wasn't there that I thought was there. There's this fire inside you to want to win, and I feel like losing that first fight really lit that fire, really gave me that extra bump. I could feel it in the gym. I remember going back to the gym and becoming this demon. I had this mentality where I was going in there to war during these practices and sparring sessions. I remember being so aggressive and so motivated in the gym, and I think that carried over into my fights afterward.

Bessette: It's the ego thing. Early on, my ego wouldn't accept the fact that I'd lost. I needed to get back into the win column right away so I could call myself a winner again. Coming off a loss and wanting to win again was fueled by my own need to impress myself and be better in my own head. I got another win, and it was like, "Oh yeah, I remember what this feels like."

Luque: I'm really persistent. I don't know how to quit. If we're going to play video games and it's my first time playing the game, I'm gonna lose, but I'm gonna want to play that game until I'm able to win. I'm not the kind of guy who gives up when something hard comes, and I think that was a big part of me being able to eventually get to the UFC and have the career I'm having now.

It was difficult, because I was mentally affected by the loss. For a long time, it was inside my head. But it didn't matter if I lost or if I won - I was still working hard and I was still making sure that I wanted to reach my dream. And I was going to reach my dream no matter what. When you have a goal, you gotta really put that in first place.

Krause: I couldn't quit this game if my life depended on it. This is a drug for me. It's what I crave. I'm serious. The game wears on us to some degree, but you have to love it. If you don't love it, you're gonna face adversity and you're gonna quit during that adversity. It happens all the time.

It wasn't easy, because it's the first time I experienced adversity. It matters, it counts. Your first loss is not easy to overcome. But it's what's necessary.

Smolka: I got into this for legacy. I wanted to go down as one of the greatest ever. There were guys like Fedor (Emelianenko) and a couple others who just had one loss, and it was kind of excusable. So I just told myself, "It's alright, one loss can be excused. You'll still be great one day." It was like a mental gymnastics thing where I was able to brainwash myself into saying, "It's alright, that one doesn't count, you can still move forward, you can still do what you set out to do."

I've been doing that my whole life. That's how I got this far, literally brainwashing myself into believing things that are pretty improbable. I think Bruce Lee said your goals are not always meant to be achieved but sometimes just something to aim for. If you set your sights high and you expect all these great things from yourself, you might not exactly accomplish what you set out to accomplish, but as long as you get close, you still did well.

A lot of this sport is mental. Mental tricks. Mental gymnastics. Believing you're untouchable, but finding that balance of not being overly cocky and reckless. It's a tricky thing to do, and we don't always get it right.

Meerschaert: I think it's gonna happen that you lose no matter what. For me, I pretty much accepted that. I lost enough in the gym to know that I'm not Superman. It's not gonna be like a movie where you're magically just gonna learn some moves and go out there and John Wick everybody. Real, true competitors know how to deal with adversity, and they're gonna get back up and work through it no matter how much it hurts.