If you intend to see what it resembles to really think, return and view Jiří Procházka’s face throughout his battle with Aleksandr Rakic at UFC 300.
View carefully as he strolls to the facility of the cage, circling around with his hands reduced and his topknot high. Maintain seeing as he turns and misses out on, as he takes leg kicks and consumes an ideal cross. He maintains stepping forward that entire preliminary and extremely little of that strategy appears to be helping him. By the time he goes back to his edge he will certainly have shed the preliminary on every scorecard. He’ll have landed simply 16 strikes to Rakic’s 38.
He will certainly additionally still use the specific very same expression that he began with, no tip of a modification, not also the faintest twinkle of fear wrinkling its means over his vast beard. For all 8 mins and 17 secs of the battle, he combated like it never ever also struck him that he might shed.
Recalling currently, he sees his technique because preliminary as maybe a bit “less than professional.”
” I allow Aleksandr struck me way too much,” Procházka informed Yahoo Sports today. “I allowed him leave his damages, attempting to make him function. However often I’m functioning like that due to the fact that I require to target my challenger truly well. And often I uncommitted regarding these tiny problems due to the fact that I think when I discover the target and when I capture him, that’s my video game after that.”
He was right, certainly. In the 2nd round he ultimately located Rakic with his right-hand man. The tornado of strikes that complied with would certainly make Procházka a TKO success, which established the phase for Saturday evening’s light heavyweight title rematch versus champ Alex Pereira at UFC 303 at T-Mobile Sector in Las Las Vega.
However you do not require to be a mixed martial arts specialist to recognize that this end result was not foretelled. Obtaining clipped that lot of times in the preliminary as you search for the best shot? That’s an approach that can conveniently backfire. Yet every little thing regarding Procházka because battle exhibited overall belief. Not hope, mind you. That’s what a great deal of boxers have actually, very finely camouflaged as idea. As high as they may inform themselves their strategies will certainly function and success will certainly be theirs, you can see that pale tip of worry that perhaps it will not.
You do not see any one of that with Procházka. Never. Not also in battles that he does shed, like his initial conference with Pereira in 2015. Right up till it mores than, this is plainly a male that thinks. It’s the example you can not phony, at the very least not long. Every one of that makes you ask yourself, where does that originated from?
A whole lot has actually been made from Procházka’s entire samurai offer and not constantly in a corresponding style. Rakic, as an example, invested a section of the lead up to their battle satirizing the truth that a person birthed in what was after that Czechoslovakia in 1992 would certainly walk like he assumed he remained in feudal Japan with a katana at his waistline.
However this was not a brand-new point for Procházka. Throughout the years he invested battling in Japan’s Rizin company, his pre-fight emphasis methods frequently captured others unprepared. As Rizin intermediator Shingo Kashiwagi told ESPN in 2022, “I believe Jiri was a lot more Japanese than most of us over right here in Japan.”


What Rakic and others stopped working to recognize, Procházka claimed, is that his entire samurai point isn’t always suggested to be taken essentially. It’s not also suggested for any person else to observe or really feel any type of kind of means regarding.
” These are concepts I utilize in my battling design, however additionally in my life,” Procházka informed Yahoo Sports today. “When I began to live by doing this, I saw the definition in battling. I began to see the definition in the everyday points. Why do that? Why do this? Just how I can be much better? Just how I can make enhancements in my life and just how I intend to live? And after that I begin to recognize this is my, not fate, however this is my means.”
When you think of it, it’s truly not so various from an individual making a decision to obey an old spiritual message or the works of thinkers that have actually been dead for centuries. If you make a decision to take on the worldview outlined by Marcus Aurelius, nobody charges you of cosplaying as a Roman emperor.
As Procházka fasts to mention, everyone requires something. A resource of real ideas, whatever time and area it originates from, can be an effective point. And as renowned mixed martial arts trainer Greg Jackson claimed regarding completely boxers self-mythologize, “The majority of what we inform ourselves regarding that we are and where we originate from is bulls *** anyhow, so you may also inform on your own the bulls *** that’s mosting likely to assist.”
Procházka’s idea has actually obtained him this much. It aided him manage an unlikely entry gain Glover Teixeira to assert the UFC light heavyweight title in 2022, just to after that relinquish it after being sidelined by a shoulder injury. It additionally aided him defeat Rakic to rebound from that loss to Pereira.
However if there’s one drawback to having such unshakeable belief in on your own, maybe that it makes it tougher to totally value the threats that are appropriate before you. Because initial battle with Pereira, perhaps Procházka played way too much right into his challenger’s hands. While evaluating the defend the UFC’s “Countdown” program in advance of this rematch, Pereira kept in mind that Procházka’s success in the preliminary made him naturally hostile in the 2nd framework, opening the chance for counters.


” I believe he invested a bit a lot more gas there than I did,” Pereira claimed. “When it mosted likely to the 2nd round, he saw that it would certainly be an extremely difficult battle. … In the 2nd round, I understood he would certainly be a lot more hostile due to the fact that he pressed tougher than me. Because last minute there when he was searching, I believe he worried a little bit and wished to attempt to complete the battle there.”
That was all the opening Pereira required. A straight right-hand man counter and the comply with up left hook tottered Procházka, and the comply with up elbow joints while protecting the takedown dropped him for the surface. Ultimately, perhaps it was the overeager assault, with maybe insufficient worry of what may be coming back at him, that shown to be Procházka’s ruin.
This time around Procházka significantly understands what he’s up versus, he claimed. He additionally comprehends what it required to obtain right here to begin with. If the 2nd battle with Pereira does not end up in a different way, he additionally needs to recognize he’ll have a tough time persuading the UFC to provide him a 3rd.
” I compromised every little thing in the previous 10, 15 years to accomplish this, to be the most effective,” Procházka claimed. “Now, I have the ability to reveal that. … We are reuniting, however, for me this is a brand-new battle. I’m a beginner. Alex is a beginner. And Saturday I will certainly reveal that I have the ability to be a champ.”