LFA 200’s Joey Hart: Looks to Take Away from DWCS, Show Out at LFA 200

Photo Courtesy of Joey Hart on IG (@joeyhartyo)

This past fall, Joey Hart got the call to be part of the latest season of Dana White’s Contender Series. After an awkward style matchup created a back-and-forth fight, Hart was left in the middle of the cage waiting for a decision. While plenty of media outlets thought he won the fight, Hart didn’t believe that himself at the time.

“It was a great experience. It was a lot of fun, first of all. But as far as where I was at mentally when they were reading it, I felt like I didn’t do enough,” Hart admitted. “Honestly, I can’t change retroactively and be like, oh, I thought I won just because people say I did.”

Some of that was due to the scoring criteria. However, some of that feeling comes from the goals he sets on himself prior to every fight. He believes he should be able to knock all of his opponents out and that’s not the way that it went down.

“Like in my mind, my job was to go in there and knock him out. And when the final bell rang and he was still standing, it was like, well, I screwed up,” he said. “I didn’t do what I had to do.”

This Saturday brings his first chance to rebuild himself back up as a prospect and contender. LFA 200 is a monumental card for the promotion he had called home before that fight. And he’s looking to carry the lessons from that fight into action in Minnesota.

“I can’t get too specific with the next fight coming up. Obviously, I’m sure the next opponent’s looking to capitalize on certain things. But just on general stuff, like urgency. I mean, I wasn’t urgent enough,” he said. If I had done just a little bit more, I think in round two, because I believe every judge gave me round three. And then it’s like, OK, if I just got one more judge to give me round two, then that’s the fight, that’s the contract. So urgency is the number one easy takeaway.”

With that urgency on the forefront, he’s ready to get back to what he does best – knocking people out.

“I’d say knockout in the second round,” he said. “Place your money, place your bets on me if you want to win.”

Joey Hart fights Chris Mixan as part of the LFA 200 main card this weekend. The main card begins at 8pm EST on UFC Fight Pass.

You can hear the entire audio of this interview below at 31:06.