Former CES MMA welterweight champion Chuck O’Neil will look to snap a two fight losing streak on Friday night at CES MMA 33 when he meets Dennis Olson in a middleweight bout in the co-main event of the fight card coming from the Twin River Casino in Lincoln, Rhode Island.
Prior to his recent defeats, O’Neil (15-8) had won four in a row and won the CES MMA welterweight title in October of 2014 against Ricardo Funch. He followed up that victory with a successful title defense against Emmanuel Walo at CES MMA 27 as he won by knockout in eleven seconds.
The victory over Walo came on January 30, 2015 and that was the lone highlight for O’Neil in his MMA career last year. On Tuesday’s edition of “The MMA Report Podcast,” O’Neil joined the show to preview his fight on Friday against Olson and explained that he understands what went wrong in his last two fights.
“Life lessons. Take it and move on from it,” O’Neil said about what he learned from his recent defeats. “You can’t live in the past and if you do, you are going to be hung up in regret. You can’t live like that. We have taken that and understood what went wrong. We are moving on from that. My last fight at welterweight in June against now UFC fighter Dom Steele. He is a tough grinder and it presented the fact that I can’t be cutting to 170 anymore.”
“I posted a picture recently of the last time I made weight at 170 and I looked terrible,” he continued. “It’s disgusting for me to look at that now. I can’t believe that I had one of the biggest fights of my career the next day after looking like this. I feel so much better now being at middleweight and the last fight is the way it was. We have to leave it there and move on from that. You can’t hang your head on it and dwell on it because then you are going to go out with self doubt going into the fight.”
Check out O’Neil’s complete interview from Tuesday’s episode of “The MMA Report Podcast” below and be sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes and Stitcher.