Why Mike Pyle wouldn't accept Matt Brown fight if given a do-over

Everyone in the world lives with regrets, and UFC welterweight Mike Pyle is no different.

Pyle (26-9-1 MMA, 9-4 UFC), like many others, has made decisions in his life that, in hindsight, turned out to be the wrong ones. And while he isn’t the type who daydreams about the what-ifs, Pyle thinks he made a poor career decision in fighting Matt Brown (19-11 MMA, 12-6 UFC) at UFC Fight Night 26 this past August.

“I had just had a kid,” Pyle recently told MMAjunkie Radio. “I was really looking forward to being a dad. Then the Brown fight came up quickly. It was at the last minute, so I took that just days after he was born.”

When UFC matchmakers call and offer a bout, the primary reason a fighter will turn it down is because of injury. Pyle wasn’t dealing with any such issues when he agreed to fight Brown, and to be frank, he was just as confident in victory as ever.

“I thought it was a great matchup,” Pyle said. “I really liked the matchup. I liked the fight. I knew it was going to be a good fight.”

The contest didn’t go anywhere close to what Pyle had planned. He was knocked out cold in a mere 29 seconds, marking the quickest fight of his nine career losses.

Unwilling to sit on a defeat for long, Pyle would return to the octagon several months later and pick up a third-round knockout of T.J. Waldburger at UFC 170. Training camps for Brown and Waldburger forced Pyle to spend a lot of time away from his newborn son, and while the Waldburger fight produced the result he was looking for, the Brown fight still is a regret.

“Not to take anything away from Brown: He caught me with a clean shot,” Pyle said. “Whether I had a kid or not doesn’t make a difference. He got a good shot and he put me out.

“If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t. But I did, and it’s something I have to live with, and I’m not ashamed of it, and it doesn’t bother me. Brown’s a fantastic fighter.”

While the defeat may have been a stinger at the time, it now looks less damaging considering what “The Immortal” has done since. In fact, all of Pyle’s defeats since 2010, which include Brown, Rory MacDonald and Jake Ellenberger, have come to fighters who are highly ranked in the welterweight division.

Pyle has not fought since his victory over Waldburger in February, but he’s looking to get back in the octagon before the end of the year. His son’s birth may have caused some distractions in the early going, but now that he’s had some time to adjust, Pyle said being a father is a source of inspiration for his fighting career.

“Having a kid now, having my son Max, is a whole different perspective on everything now, all positive,” Pyle said. “That urge to protect (and) provide has really flipped a good switch for me.”

For a fighter who has been in the game since 1999, Pyle needs to draw from any newfound sources of inspiration he can find. His son has provided that, and with wins in five of his past six bouts, the 38-year-old is confident now is his time to make a run toward the top of the division.

“I’m 100 percent I’ll be in the top 10 by the end of the year,” Pyle said. “There’s not really names on my radar because I just feel like if I say, ‘Hey, let me fight so and so,’ I’m kind of asking for a fight that I think is better for me. I just want to fight. Somewhere along the way, I’m going to have to fight everyone, hopefully. That’s just the way I look at it. There’s not one person I want to fight.”

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