Sean O'Connell may be backed into corner, but hey, he made the UFC Fight Night 102 poster

ALBANY, N.Y. – Sean O'Connell is at a crossroads moment in his UFC career, and he knows it.

The light heavyweight has lost two straight fights for the second time in his UFC career. Those two two-fight skids are sandwiched around a pair of TKO wins, but memories can be short in this sport when fighters approach three straight on the slide.

On Friday, O’Connell (17-8 MMA, 2-4 UFC) has what he believes will be his toughest test yet when he meets Corey Anderson (8-2 MMA, 5-2 UFC) in a light heavyweight bout on the main card of UFC Fight Night 102, which takes place at Times Union Center in Albany, N.Y., and streams on UFC Fight Pass.

But even with a potentially career-ending fight looming, O’Connell is just happy about one thing: He’s on the redesigned poster for UFC Fight Night 102. He and Anderson made the poster when Patrick Cummins left the card with an injury, leaving Gian Villante with a new opponent.

“It might not be a big deal to other people, but I made the poster for the first time in my career,” O’Connell told MMAjunkie. “A lot of people go however many fights in their career and they never get on the poster. So my mom’s gonna love this, and that’s all that really matters.”

The assumption is mom would love him to get a win even more than the poster with his mug shot on it, though.

MMA is a fairly unforgiving sport. In June in Canada, O’Connell put on a great show against Steve Bosse, but fell short and lost a split decision. O’Connell is quick to point out that the loss wasn’t highway robbery. In fact, in the media outlets tracked by MMADecisions.com, eight scored the fight for O’Connell, seven scored it for Bosse, and five had it a draw. It’s hard to get much more down the middle than that.

One judge, one fight, is how close O’Connell is to winning three of his past four instead of looking at the potential of a three-fight skid.

“It’s definitely the toughest fight of my career, and it also comes at the most crucial juncture in my career,” he said. “Even though I feel like I won that last fight and got robbed in a bad decision, that’s not what goes down in your ultimate record. I’m coming off back-to-back losses, and this is an absolute must-win fight, probably for the UFC brass, and for me personally.

“It’s one of those do-or-die fights. Truthfully, I win this fight, or my career is probably over. And that’s something I have to consider every moment of the fight. How many guys do they keep around if they lose three in a row?”

O’Connell was reminded that in six UFC fights so far, despite the 2-4 record, he’s got three “Fight of the Night” bonuses – and that, sure, three can be that magic bad number, but exciting fighters tend to survive such cuts.

But he’s taking nothing for granted.

“Ultimately, as a fighter, you try to be in control of your destiny, and the only way you do that is by winning fights,” he said. “This is the last fight on my current deal, and we have new ownership that might be less familiar with my three ‘Fight of the Night’ performances and things like that. So I have to go in and I have to win against Corey Anderson. As tough as that’s going to be, that’s just the way it is.”

Anderson is a 4-1 favorite in the fight. Those are the highest odds against O’Connell since he’s been in the UFC. In fact, all four times he’s been the underdog in the fight, he’s walked away from the octagon disapointed. The two times he was favored, against Matt Van Buren and Anthony Perosh, are his two UFC wins.

So something has to give, and O’Connell said it’s tough to find any momentum when you have no wins during the year. But he also believes maybe this time, the oddsmakers have things skewed a little too much in Anderson’s favor.

Now he has to prove it on Friday – and maybe save his UFC career in the process.

“I’m trying to jumpstart my career again against the toughest opponent I’ve ever faced,” O’Connell said. “It’s obviously not something that would be described as an ideal situation. But I’m also the kind of guy who doesn’t expect to be handed anything special. I know I don’t have that caché in this company yet or in this sport yet. So if I’m going to prove myself, I’d rather do it against someone known and tough and ranked than against some random guy.

“I feel like we match up better than most people think we do. He’s obviously taller than me. He’s got a reach advantage on me. He’s more known for his wrestling and that grind-it-out style. But if you watch some of his fights, he sets a pace that’s really hard for people to keep up with and they mentally break, and I don’t feel like I’m the kind of guy who breaks mentally. I try to do the same thing to people, and I think that makes this an exciting matchup.”

For more on UFC Fight Night 102, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.