Jason Knight was finished by Ricardo Lamas in the first round of their preliminary card encounter at UFC 214.
The featherweight had trouble dealing with the defeat, until he came face to face with Ricardo’s father after the Octagon battle.
“I feel fine,” Knight told MMA Junkie. “Something that helped me out a whole lot: I talked to Ricardo Lamas’ dad after the fight. His dad, he said, ‘Man, this loss would have been catastrophic for Ricardo. It would have put him way back on his career. Probably pushed him more toward retirement.’ For me, this loss is nothing. I lost to the No. 3 guy in the world (in the UFC rankings). I’m No. 15. And I’m just now getting started. He’s close to the end of his run. And I’m going to bounce back so much stronger, man.”
Knight had suffered only one other loss during his UFC tenure and that came to Tatsuya Kawajiri in his UFC debut.
Despite the loss, the featherweight star promises to be back better than he has ever been.
“If you don’t take nothing away from it, then yeah, you’re losing,” Knight said. “But it’s just a speed bump on the way to where I’m going. And I promise you, you’ll see me back better than ever. I won’t ever leave this sport until I’m something people are going to talk about for years and years. And make sure that I go down into that (UFC) Hall of Fame.”
For Knight, the loss to Lamas at UFC 214 was also the first time he was finished as a professional MMA fighter.
