UFC Fight Night 39's undefeated Ryan LaFlare discusses his unofficial career loss

For UFC welterweight Ryan LaFlare, being undefeated comes with pressure. But it’s no greater than that faced by fighters with losses.

“If you’re coming off a loss, I think there’s just as much pressure,” he told MMAjunkie Radio. “You have to win your next fight, because you lost your last one, and you’re only as good as your last fight in this sport.”

Of course, LaFlare is speaking academically. He doesn’t yet know what it’s like to experience a loss, though he trains with fighters who do. As vicariously as he lives through them, though, he’s not going to truly understand until his hand isn’t raised in the octagon.

He still has a theory about why others suffer setbacks in the octagon, and why he hasn’t.

“People get caught up with the same routine and get too used to doing something,” LaFlare (10-0 MMA, 3-0 UFC) said. “They lose grip on what their main focus was in the first place. You just kind of go through the motions, and then once you lose, you say, ‘I haven’t been training the way I should be.’

“With me, when I got hurt, I was kind of reckless with my training, eating whatever I wanted, and not really taking it as seriously as I should. But when I got hurt, it almost felt like I took a loss.”

On Friday, the 30-year-old puts the zero in his record at risk for real against welterweight John Howard (22-8 MMA, 6-3 UFC), whom he meets on the UFC Fight Pass-streamed main card of UFC Fight Night 39 at du Arena in Abu Dhabi.

LaFlare came in to the UFC as a regional star and went on to rack up three straight wins against such opposition as Ben Alloway, Santiago Ponzinibbio and, most recently, “The Ultimate Fighter 11? winner Court McGee. But before he stepped into the octagon, he suffered injuries to his knee and wrist that benched him just at the point where he was gaining the momentum necessary to jump to the big stage.

As LaFlare sees it, the delay was a blessing for the mindset it encouraged as he returned to health.

“I had to revamp my training, make sure I was doing everything correctly, and I think that’s the reason I’m very successful now,” he said. “Before I got hurt, maybe I would have made it into the UFC two years earlier. But maybe I would have met somebody who was way more disciplined than I was, and then I could have met my match that way.”

Timing is everything in the fight game, and often it’s a matter of hanging in there long enough to the point where the environment presents opportunities that weren’t there before. LaFlare is 3-0 in a division that’s more wide open than it’s ever been with the departure of now-former champ Georges St-Pierre and the recent crowning of new titleholder Johny Hendricks. The UFC needs stars perhaps more than it ever has, and an undefeated prospect stands to reap huge gains.

All of that, of course, comes with a massive amount of pressure, the type LaFlare can’t even fathom at this moment. But if he’s doing everything as he should, he might become acquainted to the heat that overwhelmed St-Pierre over time and brought a seismic change to the UFC. At that point, he’ll see whether his theory is right.

In the meantime, he’s got a fight against Howard, a heavy-handed Bostonian who’s been booted from the promotion after setbacks and battled his way back into the octagon.

Both have been beaten down in their own way. Now, they’ll see who’s better at getting back up.

For more on UFC Fight Night 39, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.

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