It has been about two weeks since Josh Parisian suffered his TKO loss to Don’Tale Mayes at UFC Vegas 45, and the heavyweight has broken his silence about the defeat.
Minutes after his loss, he took to Instagram to say he had to collect his thoughts before saying anything.
“Hey guys, I’ll write a longer message later when I collect my thoughts, but for the people who care about me as a person, I’m 100% okay. I was mentally broke before I even got In there and already accepted defeat. I lost the fight before the fight,” Parisian wrote.
Twelve days later, we got that message. Josh Parisian again took to social media, giving a detailed account of what transpired heading into the fight.
“I’ve had 2 weeks to think about my fight and where I think the problem laid. I wrote a very long (much longer than this already is believe it or not) and detailed post about every single thing, but truth be told, none of that really matters to anyone, but me. The only thing that matters is what I’m going to do about it. About 10 days before the fight, I realized something felt different and there was something wrong with my mindset. I tried to quickly fix the issue with writing and repeating self affirmations. I even went as far as hiring a hypnotist 4 days before to try and fix me, but there just wasn’t enough time,” Parisian wrote.
“As far as the physical side, I worked really hard on creating more power and movement in my striking. I had never seen one of my opponents fights where he wrestled and tried to get takedowns. I thought we were going to slug it out. Smart on my opponent. Grappling endurance is different than striking endurance and I made the mistake of putting all my chips in one place. All I can do is learn and do better. I probably wouldn’t be so upset about it if it was at least an exciting fight, not just some dude laying on me. In MMA, you usually wait for your opponent to create space to do damage, then try to capitalize on that opportunity to use that space to move.”
“It saves a lot of energy to do that, rather than to create your own space while they’re trying to just control you, but my opponent never tried to create any space to do damage. The worse injury I got that week was when I accidentally scraped my heel in the hot tub 2 days before lol. Of course that’s on me and that’s part of the game. It’s my job to not be there and I own that. It’s time for some extreme accountability going forward and I promise my friends, family, fans, and the UFC that I’ll do everything in my power to fix what needs to be fixed so I can keep my fights exciting and fun to watch.”
After years of grinding and busting his ass to get to the UFC, Parisian sees himself 1-2 in the promotion. He picked up his first UFC win in June by winning a very close split decision over Roque Martinez, but lost his UFC debut to Parker Porter and most recently fell to Mayes.
