Corey Anderson is preparing for action when he battles fellow light heavyweight Sean O’Connell this Friday Night at UFC Fight Night 102, but after a loss to Mauricio Rua by split decision at UFC 198 earlier this year, the UFC Ultimate Fighter 19 winner considered leaving the sport altogether.
“When they said ‘Shogun,’ (won the fight) I was content with it,” Anderson told MMA Junkie. “Then when I watched the video in the room and saw I really dominated, even though I didn’t do that much in the first round. I hit him more, I took him down, I was kicking him, I was blocking. I was like, ‘Man, I should’ve won that.’ Then when I saw (on MMADecisions.com) they did a poll of 25 reporters, and 21 of them thought I won … now it really started to get to me. For a moment, I wanted to walk away from it. If they’re saying the judges are cheating me, and that dictates my career, do I really want to depend on that? Do I want to make money depending on what someone else says? I want to do something where I can control it. If I didn’t get the finish but I did enough to win, and everybody thinks I was cheated, is this serious? Is this something I want to do for the rest of my life? It really hurt me for a while. For a while, I stayed home – for a month and a half, two months. I was at my parents’ house. My parents were like, ‘When are you going back to training?’ I had to get my bearings back.”
Despite the setback to Rua at UFC 198, Anderson had already earned five wins in the UFC, with some notable wins coming over Matt Van Buran, Fabio Maldonado and Tom Lawlor.
UFC Fight Night 102 takes place on Friday, December 9 from the Times Union Center in Albany, New York with Derrick Lewis and Shamil Abdurakhimov headlining, the entire card streams live on UFC Fight Pass.
