As far as coping with the loss which tarnished his previously perfect professional mixed martial arts record, losing may be unfamiliar to the New York native, but it’s certainly not new.
“The other thing that I think people forget is that I had a life before fighting (laughs). I’ve lost, like, 50 wrestling matches. I’ve lost so many times. Not only did I lose, but had to turn around and compete right after,” Gillespie said. “I think people thought I was dwelling on it — and it did really bother me; it had been eight years since my last loss. Yeah, it hurt. There was some mourning there and some grieving. But Coach Flynn, my college coach, told me that in this kind of sport, you have to have amnesia. You can’t dwell on a great win for too long and you can’t sob about a loss for two long. So I think I was over it in three days.”
“The Gift” still speaks with his college wrestling coach on a fairly regular basis, but it’s one of the only things he’s carried from that season of his life into this one. In fact, had you told Gillespie the position he’d be in today following his final college wrestling match in 2009, he’d probably laugh in your face.
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“The Gregor that said he would never fight was living a completely different life. I had some drug and alcohol problems, and at that time…” Gillespie said, pausing before his next sentence. “College wrestling is just so hard. I remember when I got done with that, I remember saying, ‘My sentence has been served, I never have to compete again.’ Not that I was going to get fat and out of shape and be a total loser, but I just didn’t want to compete. I was done with it.
“And then I think once I really went off the deep end, and then got back on track, I didn’t really have a purpose. So I just started to train again with some guys at Edinboro while I was doing the rest of my school that I hadn’t finished, and I realized that I’m just so competitive. I thought, ‘Now I’m doing it right, so let’s see what I can do when I do it right.’ And now here we are 10 years later.”