Trading Shots: When is taking chances the same as courting disaster?

How careful should fighters be when it comes to balancing risk and reward in their careers? Retired UFC and WEC fighter Danny Downes discusses it with MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes in this week’s Trading Shots.

Downes: Ben, you may have lost an hour of sleep this weekend, but I’ve been losing sleep on another matter. What do we expect from professional fighters? There may be greater mysteries in the world, but the fallout of UFC 196 has brought this one to the fore.

We admire Conor McGregor for fighting last-minute opponents and changing weight classes, but Holly Holm is foolish for not waiting for Ronda Rousey. Holm is a “gangster” for not tapping out. Therefore, that makes McGregor the opposite of a gangster (prep-school lacrosse player?) for tapping.

How many risks do we want fighters to take? Sounds like they’ll get criticized no matter what.

Fowlkes: I found myself thinking about this first when making my latest Speed Bag video (oh, you missed that and would like a link to it – OK FINE), but also when I heard that Conor McGregor may jump right back in the cage at UFC 200.

Let us say, just for the sake of argument, that McGregor comes back to featherweight and gets himself beaten this summer. Ascribe the loss to any cause you like. Maybe coming back down to 145 pounds is tougher than he expects. Maybe the holes in his grappling game are now too visible to ignore, yet also too serious to fix in a few months time. Whatever.

Say we wake up the morning after UFC 200 and McGregor is no longer the UFC featherweight champ, suddenly 0-2 in the year 2016, and with a lot of I-told-you-so floating in the air. Would he not wish then that he had been just a tad more risk-averse, just a little bit more careful?

Not that I’m worried about McGregor so much. His appeal would probably withstand a few quick losses, and even if the ride ended tomorrow, he still made enough money to keep him from plummeting to the poor house. But we’ve seen this mentality work against other fighters, haven’t we? What I wonder is, how careful can a fighter be and still keep the confident mental state that’s essential for success in this sport?

Downes: Whether it’s their particular style or competition frequency, every fighter takes some risks. I mean, if someone were truly risk averse, they’d probably just sit in front of a camera in their office and just give opinions on things.

Confidence is a tricky thing for athletes, and different fighters respond to it in different ways. Ken Shamrock may be an extreme example, but he still thinks he can compete. All those losses are because he got screwed by the ref or a commission or someone else. The most common refrain we hear from fighters after a loss isn’t, “Well, my opponent clearly has greater skill than me. I bet if we fought 10 times, I’d probably only win two, maybe three.” Instead we hear, “It just wasn’t my night. Something was off.”

Confidence for a fighter is a very short-term thing. In the immediate aftermath of a fight, emotions are multiplied 100 times over. After a win, you feel a type of euphoria, like your whole existence has been justified. After a loss, you feel terrible, and that’s when the self-doubt creeps in.

Fortunately, those feelings (positive or negative) soon fade away. You get back in the gym, do your strength and conditioning, and hit some pads. Before you know it, that same cockiness comes back. To media and fans, a fighter is only as good as his or her last fight. To fighters, they’re as good as their next fight. You know they’re in the “best shape of their lives.”

Part of what bothers me in the UFC 196 aftermath is that people seem to be asking fighters to think like promoters. Yes, fighters should think about the bigger picture and work on marketing themselves instead of being like everyone else, but do we really want them to be that business-oriented?

Fowlkes: That’s a fair point. A bunch of fighters thinking like CEOs would probably not be much fun to watch. And, as the UFC matchmakers have said, if everyone only took fights they were sure they could win, you’d hardly ever see any fights.

But as much as we like to make fun of fighters for saying it wasn’t their night, can’t that be true some of the time? We’ve all seen fights where losses seemed at least a partial consequence of taking the wrong fight at the wrong time. I understand the need to be confident, to take risks, to get in there and roll those dice. That’s how you get somewhere as a fighter.

But it also seems like someone, whether it’s the fighter himself or his manager or his coaches, should think about the what-ifs and the backup plans. Because you know the promoters aren’t going to worry themselves too much about paving your future path. Not unless you’re one of the chosen few.

Downes: Fighters and their managers can and do make tactical errors. You have to bet on yourself, though. Just like in a fight itself, if you stay cautious and don’t throw anything, you’re not going to win.

Fortunately, as short as fighters’ memories are, the public is mostly the same way. You could lose a couple high-profile fights or flee the scene of a hit-and-run. But as long as you come back and win the next one, all is forgiven.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Danny Downes, a retired UFC and WEC fighter, is an MMAjunkie contributor who also writes for UFC.com and UFC 360. Follow them on twitter at @benfowlkesMMA and @dannyboydownes.