Over the years, a few UFC fighters have talked about their nerves before fights. Former welterweight champion George St-Pierre and former two-time title challenger Cowboy Cerrone come to mind. You can add Gilbert Burns to the list.
In a recent interview with ESPN, Burns admitted that he has always been a little nervous before fights, but since suffering his TKO loss to Kamaru Usman, his nerves have worsened.
Pre-fight nerves
“It’s getting worse, you know. I have a psychologist that I talk to her. To be honest, the fight with Kamaru [Usman] changed that,” Burns said. “The fight with Kamaru, now I can say that we trained together. I remember the last training we had before that – I got the best of him. Look, I lost a couple of trainings, I won a couple of trainings – but the last one where we trained hard, it was at my garage at my house and I did very good, especially in the grappling scenario. I got a couple of submissions in, that kind of boosted my confidence so much that it passed the level where it’s over. I was overconfident.”
“The fight with Karamu I wasn’t nervous at all. I was just like, ‘I don’t care, I’m going to finish this guy and become the champion.’ I was already looking ahead. That was a mistake.”
Burns said that after the loss at UFC 258, he was very nervous in his next fight with Stephen ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson.
“I went back, the next fight was ‘Wonderboy.’. In the ‘Wonderboy’ fight, I was so nervous because I wanted the opposite of the feeling going into the Kamaru fight. I wanted to be nervous,” Burns said. “I was just like, ‘Okay that’s how I’m supposed to feel, everything went good, I won, I want to be like that again.’ I need to have that little bit of fear in me. I need to know that I’m getting into a fight and not completely be confident. I need the fear. The fear kind of helped me.”
The nervousness came back for his most recent outing against Chimaev, which hit him hard.
Burns said he likes to be nervous because the fear gets him through the fights. It is a motivation.
“I hate it at the beginning but love it at the end,” Burns said.
Burns’ next fight
The top welterweight contender is waiting for his next opponent while he heals from a hand injury. He hopes he gets Jorge Masvidal for his next fight and that the UFC is interested in it.
“The UFC kinda interested little bit in Jorge Masvidal. That’s the fight they want to make. Masvidal showed little bit interest, I showed a lot of interest. I thnk that’s the next one to do it. I don’t know when, I think I’ll be ready to go by September. And I think September, October, November that’s the latest that I would wait for Masvidal,” Burns said.
