Louis Smolka walked into UFC Fight Night 96 as a top ten ranked flyweight in the UFC, but when the fighter left the octagon that night, he was on the wrong side of a massive upset.
Smolka would be submitted in the first round of his fight against late replacement opponent Brandon Moreno, Smolka would seek some help from the bottom of a bottle to get over this loss.
“I drank for about a month,” Smolka said to MMA Junkie. “I kind of just stared at the bottom of a shot glass for about a month, and I felt sorry for myself. You kind of have to. If you care about this sport, when you do lose, you’re going to cry. That’s just how it is. We give it our all, and I had to feel bad about myself for a while and had to go cry in a corner. (Getting) the next fight helps, but you get to a point where you ask yourself, ‘Am I going to sit here and cry forever? Or am I going to pick up the pieces and move on?’ There’s a suitable mourning period. It’s like when you break up with a girl. There’s a suitable mourning period, and then you get over it.”
Smolka believes a lack of research on his opponent lead to the loss, a mistake he won’t be repeating in the future.
“I should have researched better,” Smolka said. “I thought he was a boxing-based fighter, so when I shot that outside single(-leg takedown), I thought he would try to just stuff the shot or whatever. But he was actually a grappling-based fighter, and I didn’t know that because I only watched the highlights of his one fight on (‘The Ultimate Fighter 24’). I didn’t even watch the whole fight. I just watched the highlights. I just assumed he was a boxer and a volume puncher.”
UFC 207 takes place on Friday, December 30 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada with Amanda Nunes and Ronda Rousey headlining.
