The smoke has cleared and the dust has settled—UFC 145 is over.
While this weekend was supposed to answer all the questions—Could Rashad dethrone Jones? Could Jones finish Evans? Would the feud between them end with the fight?—we head into Monday with a new batch of queries that may be even more difficult to answer.
Perhaps the most pertinent question to come of UFC 145 concerns Rashad Evans. After talking so much trash, telling everyone so definitively that he would win and preparing for the fight of his life only to come up short, where does he go from here?
The first question posed to Rashad during the UFC 145 post-fight press conference was whether or not he might drop down to middleweight.
He answered in the negative. So, at least we know where he isn’t going—middleweight.
Rashad explained that he intends to reassert himself as the light heavyweight division’s No. 1 contender by continuing to improve and reeling off wins.
But can a guy really ever come back after losing a fight that he was so emotionally invested in? Or will everything from here on out seem meaningless by comparison?
It may be difficult for Evans to get up for bouts against anyone not named Jon Jones for the next little while, but if he takes the right mindset in addressing the situation, he will be just fine.
If he is having trouble training for his next opponent, whoever it might be, he can instead train for Jon Jones. When he fights his next opponent, he can address the fight as if he is fighting Jon Jones.
Such mental direction is difficult to assume, but Evans is a smart guy and he has to know that the barriers he faces are extensions of Jones himself.
Like salesmen may see a bag of groceries rather than a customer walk through the door of their store, Evans needs to see Jon Jones when he looks at opponents.
This is not to suggest he can, or should, overlook anyone. On the contrary, he needs to address each fight as if he is in fact fighting the best 205-pounder in the world—Jon Jones.
If Evans keeps his eye on the prize, he will make it back into the cage with Jones someday, and with the marketability of a rematch, that day might come sooner rather than later.
Evans remains one of the top light heavyweights in the world. He is the all-time leader in takedowns for any UFC light heavyweight to have ever graced the Octagon and his lightning-quick strikes were on display when he staggered Jones with a head-kick in Round 1 and wobbled him with a right hook in Round 2 of last night’s bout.
He has the tools to reclaim No. 1 contender status and if he wants Jones badly enough, nothing will be able to stop him from getting there.
Sometimes, losses make fighters better—this is a reflection of an individual’s intelligence, persistence and drive. With Jon Jones as the motivator to fuel these attributes, you can bet your bottom dollar that the next time Evans mixes it up in the UFC, he will do so as the best version of himself that there has ever been.
Whether Evans one day dethrones Jon Jones remains to be seen. But he will one day take another kick at the can.
And don’t expect the wait to be too long.
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