UFC Fight Night 33's Ryan Bader working to embrace fighting contradiction

Ryan Bader has been through this before.

Earlier in his competitive life, the 30-year-old UFC light heavyweight was forced to ask himself what was going wrong in his athletic career, and following a knockout loss to Glover Teixeira in his most recent fight, he’s found the same answer.

It lies in his wrestling career at Arizona State University, where he found success as a three-time PAC-10 champion and a two-time All-American.

Those achievements didn’t contain the lesson he needed to resuscitate his fighting career, of course. That came in his senior year of school after he hit a wall as a junior.

“I was losing matches I shouldn’t have, and nationals I didn’t place, and I didn’t (make) All-American,” Bader (15-4 MMA, 8-4 UFC), who meets Anthony Perosh (14-7 MMA, 4-4 UFC) on the FOX Sports 1-televised main card of UFC Fight Night 33, told MMAjunkie. “I just fell apart that year.”

When he came back for his final wrestling season before pushing off for the real world, he was pulled aside by his longtime coach, Aaron Simpson, who later would join him as a professional MMA fighter.

“He was like, ‘Go out and win by one or two points like you used to. You don’t need to be up by five points right away,’” Bader remembers. “I was trying stupid moves to get up on somebody, and I was getting caught on my back. I was losing.”

If that sounds like a familiar theme, you’ve seen Bader’s most stinging setbacks in the cage. Against Lyoto Machida at UFC on FOX 4, he felt pressure to put on a crowd-pleasing affair. He wanted to “spice things up” and go after the ex-champ with a forward attack.

A few seconds later, he was looking up at the lights after being knocked out cold.

Against Glover Teixeira at this past September’s UFC Fight Night 28, Bader rocked the Brazilian with a punch.

“I was pretty technical up until that point, and when I saw that, I got kind of crazy, throwing big punches, and I got caught,” he said. “I had four more rounds to continue with Glover, but I wanted to get him out of there right then and there, and I paid for it.”

What makes Bader so impatient?

“I don’t know,” he said with a smile. “It’s not a bad thing necessarily. I want to get somebody out there and finish the fight right away, but when I see somebody hurt, I want to get in there and knock them out. But I have to do it technically and patiently.”

When Bader returned for his senior year at ASU, he stopped trying to be flashy and win big. Instead, he focused on a slow and steady march toward victory.

“I came back and beat people and was an All-American again,” he said.

The question now is whether Bader can bounce back the same way when he’s in the cage. He believes that while he isn’t always patient, he does return a better fighter following a loss.

After his setback against Machida, he returned to submit Vladimir Matyushenko in a cool 50 seconds.

Perosh, too, knows a lot about redemption, having knocked out Vinny Magalhaes in 14 seconds at UFC 163 after being on the receiving end of a seven-second knockout at UFC 149. Bader acknowledges a contradiction in trying to patiently look for a KO during a fight, but he said to advance in the light heavyweight division, it’s one he’ll need to embrace.

“This is the fight where I could put everything together,” he said. “I’ve never had a fight where I looked back and said that was the fighter I am, and I want to be. I want this fight to be that fight, if that makes sense.”

For the latest on UFC Fight Night 33, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.