Fighters make excuses for losses all the time, whether they admit it or not – excuses are simply apart of mixed martial arts. From cracked skulls, to not having enough money to train, all the way to being poisoned, we’ve heard it all.

Former UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman recently stated that he suffered a fractured foot prior to his loss to Luke Rockhold at UFC 194 this past December. Weidman made it clear he was not making an excuse, just informing fans what had happened. But, whether or not he realizes it, what he said is an excuse. The fight is in the past, so what happened prior to the fight doesn’t matter at this point. The public doesn’t need to know that he was injured, even if that is the truth. Why even bring it up?

There’s an obvious reason Weidman made it clear he was injured in the Rockhold fight — fighters need to be confident in their abilities and believe they can be the best. At the same time, however, fighters need to be humble in defeat. They can’t always assume there’s another reason they lost, other than the fact that their opponent was simply better than them on that given night. And that’s exactly what Weidman is doing — he likely made himself believe one of the only reasons he lost was because of the injury, and may want fans to believe the same.

On a side note, if he was indeed injured going into his fourth title defense, perhaps he should’ve thought through the possible consequences of fighting injured more carefully. Perhaps he should’ve pulled out of the fight, despite the backlash he would have almost guaranteed from fans. Perhaps it would’ve been worth it in the long run. Perhaps he would still be holding UFC gold.

I’m aware Weidman likely had good reasoning to fight injured: he hasn’t been overly active in the past few years; MMA is far from the highest-paid professional sport, therefore fighters often times need to jump at all opportunities; he wanted to avoid the backlash for pulling out from fans. All of those are fair reasons.

Weidman will have a chance to rebound from his first pro loss in an automatic rematch with Rockhold at UFC 199 in June, and he may win and become the champion again. He may prove that the injury did affect him, and that he wasn’t at the best of his abilities in his first fight with Rockhold. But if he wins, that shouldn’t be our thought process. If he wins in the rematch, we shouldn’t be recalling Weidman’s injury leading up to the first fight, because Weidman shouldn’t have revealed he fought injured in the first place.

This is a message to fans: you can’t put everything into this one injury and automatically assume Weidman defeats Rockhold 99% of the time. That could be the case, and we’ll find out who the better fighter is soon enough. But on paper, for now, anyways, Rockhold is simply a better fighter than Weidman. It was a close fight early on, but Rockhold found a way to win.

And finally, this is also a message to fighters: we don’t need to hear your excuses. It doesn’t matter if you were hurt or ill, or didn’t have the best training camp. Publicly saying afterwards you weren’t at your best during a fight won’t change anything, including the outcome of the fight.

Source – http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2016/2/15/10993202/ufc-chris-weidman-vs-luke-rockhold-injury-excuses-losses-opinion-editorial-mma-news

My oppinion – I compete in mixed martial arts and there are 3 pro fighters in my team and over 10 amature fighters. I agree that fighters need to stop making excuses for their losses. When you get inside the cage it is just you, your coaches may be telling you what to do ringside, but you are responsable for yourself the second you step in the cage. There is nobody to blame but yourself. For example, if you lost and after the fight you said you lost due to a leg injury you had before the fight then it is your fualt for cometeing with an injry because you could have called the fight before that. Coaches are not responsable for your losses ethire, this gose to all fighters. Your coaches are trying to help you and build you up, they want to see you suceed, don’t ever say your coach didn’t train you enough after a fight, if you needed more training YOU should have asked for it and worked for it. Almost all fighters have lost and its very easy to make excuses (believe me I know), but in the end we have nobody to blame but ourselves, all you can do is train harder because failure makes you stronger.