Fighters always talk about lessons learned in fights, whether its a victory or defeat and that is no different for UFC featherweight Alex White.
White (11-1) entered the UFC back in April and defeated Estevan Payan by knockout at UFC on FOX 11 and improved his mixed martial arts record to 10-0.
He returned three months later at UFC Fight Night 45 against Lucas Martins and suffered his first career defeat as he was defeated by knockout in the third round.
As White recently told The MMA Report, the defeat against Martins “lit a fire.”
“It lit quite a fire under my butt,” White said. “I should have done things different after watching it. I like the standup game and I paid for it. They call it mixed martial arts and I need to mix a couple of things into it.”
No matter what you do with your career, you want to win but the defeat for White opened up his eyes. It made him realize what he needs to work on so it does not happen again. He will look to get back on the winning side of the fight on Saturday night at UFC 181 in Las Vegas when he meets Clay Collard in the opening bout of the preliminary card on Fight Pass.
Just like White, Collard will enter this fight following a defeat as he lost his UFC debut to Max Holloway at UFC Fight Night 49 back in August. That was a fight that Collard took on short notice, just like White has done in his previous two UFC fights. Both fighters have gone through a full training camp for this fight and according to White, both share a common fighting style.
“We are both stand up fighters and I know he keeps coming forward so I think we are both going to clash,” he said.”
Three of the last four victories for White have come by TKO/KO and he does have five career victories by submission. Is there a prefered method to end the fight for White?
“I like to end it with strikes,” he said. “Everybody always like the stand up game and they get into it. I am going to do what I need to do to get the win. It may be ground and pound, or dirty box and if I can get the knockout, I am going to go for it.”