Honestly, if you are in a business like professional fighting, you know you are going to get a lot of bumps and bruises along the way. You have to accept the challenges given to you, and try to overcome the hardships to reign as the best. This is not the way Hatsu Hioki apparently sees his professional career. He is the top-ranked Japanese fighter in the world, a well-traveled athlete, and was 2-0 in the octagon. In the featherweight division of the UFC, Jose Aldo is undoubtedly one of the greatest mma fighters in the world. He is a tough contender, so it is understandable for any man to be distressed to even stand by him, let alone fight with him in the octagon. Unless of course that is your professional career.
So goes the story for Hioki who turned down a title shot with Aldo in April. Apparently, he truly felt like he was not ready to fight the champion. He believed he needed more octagon time, and more experience in the cage to put on the best performance for Aldo. Honestly though, all that would happen, best case scenario, would be Hioki would fight one or two top contenders in the featherweight division, beat them, and then once again have a chance to fight Aldo. It was an extremely poor decision on his part.
So he instead accepted a fight with Ricardo Lamas for UFC on FX 4. So on June 22 what happened? He lost. The idea of himself not being good enough to fight the champion now played into his mental game of fighting period. If you tell yourself you cannot win, you start to believe that you actually cannot win. I believe this was Hioki’s main downfall for his loss to Lamas. Maybe he truly wasn’t ready for a shot at the title, but as a professional athlete he never should have declined the offer. We can all remember in 2003 when Pete Spratt declined a title fight against then welterweight champion Matt Hughes. Now the title of refusing a title shot has been given to Hioki. If you are going to be in a business like professional mma fighting, you must always believe in yourself. This immensely improves your physical and mental game. Learn the lesson from Hioki: Always take a title shot when offered.
By: Elise Kapala