Before his last fight inside the Octagon in August, Michael Chiesa found himself in the worst patch of form of his career. The former winner of The Ultimate Fighter has overcome losses in the past and did suffer back-to-back defeats to Kevin Lee and Anthony Pettis once before.
However, in three consecutive outings, he was without a win after being submitted by Vicente Luque and Kevin Holland with a decision loss to Sean Brady in between. Chiesa was able to get back in the win column in Abu Dhabi when he submitted Tony Ferguson in the first round.
He's now set to return at UFC 310 in search of a second win when he faces Max Griffin to keep his momentum pushing forward. In the build up to this fight, the commentator and desk analyst revealed that he seriously contemplated retirement during his losing streak.
If he wasn't able to compete at the highest level anymore, he would hang up the gloves and look to continue pursuing the avenues that he's already started to go down in recent years. In an interview with Shakiel Mahjouri, Chiesa spoke about working with a sport psychologist and what his biggest takeaways from that were.
When asked what advice he would pass on to struggling fighters that may find themselves in a similar position to the one that he was in, he spoke about the importance of having goals but focusing on the present rather than looking too far ahead.
I think the biggest thing that I would say is focus on being in the present moment. That is something that I struggled with. Looking too far ahead like I’m looking too far ahead at the title or I’m looking too far ahead at the fight and worrying about getting hurt or like just looking too far ahead and not being present. It’s very important to be present in the moment every single day with your training. It’s good to have goals but you don’t have to dwell on the future and what’s yet to come or what you want to happen. You set the goals and then you put them aside and just focus on being in the moment.