We’re less than a month away from UFC 78, and things are heating up here in the gym in Albuquerque as I get ready for my fight with Michael Bisping on November 17th. Bisping’s a tough opponent coming off a tough fight with Matt Hamill where he left a lot of questions out there for his fans and for himself, so I know he’s gonna come out in this fight and try to make a statement.

I’m coming off a tough fight myself with Tito Ortiz, and whenever you leave it in the judges’ hands, and make it close enough to be that kind of decision where it’s not one-sided, you leave room for error and you’ve got to take some of that responsibility on yourself. You really can’t be like ‘I did this,’ or ‘I did that’. You really can’t make a case for yourself because if you really did as much as you believe you did, there would be no question in anybody’s mind.

I felt pretty good coming into that fight, but I didn’t perform to the best of my ability. But those are things I feel, as an up and coming fighter, that I’m going to constantly get better as I keep fighting in the big shows, and I learned that I need to come out of my comfort zone. In a fight, there comes a time where you have to step out of the comfort zone and really take chances and make yourself vulnerable in order to gain. I wasn’t willing to do that in the beginning of the fight with Ortiz. He came out and he felt really strong and very explosive, and his striking wasn’t that bad either. So all those things I thought he wasn’t gonna be good at, he was pretty good at and it surprised me. It took me a minute to say, ‘you know what, it’s not the best that I ever went against, but it’s pretty good.’ Then I started to open up, but it wasn’t enough soon enough and the judges scored it a draw. A lot of people say, ‘man, if he didn’t grab the fence, you would have lost.’ But if he didn’t grab the fence, what would have happened to him? What would the round have looked like if he didn’t grab the fence?

Looking back, I can’t say I underestimated him, but maybe I didn’t respect him as much as I should have. You can say a lot of things about that guy, but he’s a pretty tough fighter still. He’s very strong, he’s explosive, his striking has definitely got a lot better, and he was a lot better than I thought he was going to be.