“The Phenom” elaborates why he lost to Ronaldo Souza at UFC 198.
With a win at UFC 198 last Saturday, the 39-year old Vitor Belfort could once again have positioned himself as a candidate for a UFC title fight in front of a wild Brazilian crowd in Curitiba’s soccer stadium. Instead, he got crushed within one round by Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza in dominant fashion and now has to go back to the drawing board to rethink his career.
In a post on his official Facebook page, “The Phenom” explained what went wrong.
“Saturday was a day that I went to work but didn’t work,” Belfort wrote. (Translation via MMA Fighting). “Have you ever had that feeling?” Belfort wrote on his Facebook page. “I learned through my life that we can’t stop learning, and the lesson I take from my fight Saturday is: don’t wait too much for the moment because if it doesn’t come and you don’t go for it, nothing will happen. I didn’t in my fight, I was focused in the defense and lost my main quality: the attack.
“If I could leave my learning here to you, that cost me a bitter defeat, is don’t wait for the moment to come, but go after it with the confident that you will conquer it. Merits to my opponent.”
The fight against Jacare was the 37th in Belfort’s 20-year career. He contested a large percentage of his fights in the UFC and has fought for a UFC title four times. Belfort didn’t mention in the post if he wants to continue fighting or not.