There is something very real, very humanizing about hearing the Brazilian superstar speak about the weight of the expectations — both his own and those foisted upon him — he felt as he ventured in the fray for the first time in July and the conclusions he reached as he pulled apart what happened.
At some point or another, everyone has felt pressure of some kind, whether real or imagined, and been required to figure out how to contend with it. Some do it better than others, and despite his staggering list of accolades as a BJJ competitor, the UFC rookie wasn’t able to square things away for himself prior to his first appearance.
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“I was too worried about what people were gonna say if I (won), if I (lost),” Buchecha said. “I never cared about these things when it came to (my other) fights, but for the UFC, I was paying too much attention for this kind of thing. At the end of the day, it’s a lot of noise, and I don’t need to hear all this noise. Of course, I wanna do my best, wanna deliver what I train for, but at the end of the day, I can’t let other people’s opinion get in my head.
“I remember telling you, ‘I wanna carry the jiu jitsu flag. I wanna get the submission, first round,’” he added, recalling our conversation prior to that first fight. “In my head, it was too much like this; ‘I need to get the submission. I need to prove! I need to prove!’
“At the end of the day, I don’t need to prove; I need to go there and do my best.”
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