“I think the loss was a huge part of the move because there were a lot of things I didn’t do in my camp,” Cosce admits. “I did no wrestling, no sparring. There’s a lot of things I didn’t really do. It was just a lot of bad work and a lot of the stuff was hard, hard, hard, just breaking me down. I understand that they wanted me to get ready, and I didn’t have a clear concept, either; you just train hard and that’s all you know. And I think that’s what led to the injuries and all that stuff, just breaking myself down. In reality, if you go too hard, your body just starts breaking down, and that was the first time for me to see that happen. Now it’s a smarter approach.”
That’s not to say there weren’t positives taken from his third-round loss at UFC 255. The Fight of the Night bonus helped pay for his house, he proved that if he got into a dogfight, he could respond in a positive manner, and he also realized that not everyone is going to fall down, so if they don’t, he needs to have a backup plan.
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“I definitely felt like I needed that loss to learn,” he said. “When you’re winning and knocking people out, I was falling in love with it. I remember thinking, I’m gonna knock this guy the f**k out and be on my way with it. It didn’t work like that. I came close to it, but it ended up changing in a heartbeat and I started getting my ass whupped. But I felt like I needed that just to learn.”
Now he gets to put it all into action. An April fight with Preston Parsons got scrapped when Cosce caught COVID the week before, but now he’s here.
It’s finally time to fight.