MMA is certainly not a sport for the faint of heart, and light heavyweight Jesse Westfall gave us a look inside the mind of a debuting amateur fighter.

Jesse Westfall made his amateur MMA debut on May 28, 2016, at Gladius Fights 21. “The Outlaw” survived a deep rear-naked choke attempt in the second round before knocking out his opponent in the third.

Westfall currently trains with Team Bombsquad in Ithaca, New York. The fight team has produced current UFC talent such as Aljamain Sterling, Tamdan McCrory, and Jon Jones under head coach Ryan Ciotoli.

The following piece was written by Jesse Westfall:

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“Why the hell am I doing this?”

“Relax! You felt the same way when you were boxing!”

“Yeah but this is different. What if you’re not ready?”

“Calm down, you’ve trained your ass off!”

“Yeah, but what if he’s trained harder?”

“He hasn’t, now shut up and focus.”

These were all the thoughts going through my head in the waiting area, knowing my fight was next. I imagined it would be like this and I was right. Fear! Not fear of getting hurt, but fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of not performing.

My hands were taped and I went over to look at the roster to see which corner I would be in. Red.

“Damn it, I hate red. Blue is my lucky color.” I had to consciously tell myself that it is ridiculous to think that the color of a corner will impact the outcome of a fight.

“I still hate red” the thought popped into my head, “Shut up!” I told myself.

Eric Henry, one of my two cornermen, told me to come hit some pads to warm up.

Jab, cross, jab, cross, hook. I felt slow and sloppy. I repeated the sequence, this time it felt better. After two minutes of pad work I felt gassed! Why? I never gassed that quickly. Eric noticed and told me just to move around to stay warm. I then heard, “Alright Jesse, you’re on deck.”

Suddenly, all of my anxiety was gone. I felt like a warrior. I felt like I was right where I was supposed to be. I was surrounded by my teammates, guys that wanted to see me succeed.

They called my name. I walked to the cage much faster than I thought I would. I pulled my shirt off halfway to the cage. I was so focused, I handed my shirt to the cage doorman instead of my coach.

I’ve always thought that If you run up the metal steps to the cage, there’s a chance you could trip and be totally embarrassed. I ran up the steps anyway. I suddenly realized that I had not been conscious of the crowd the whole time I had been walking out. I simply didn’t care that they were there.

Though I had watched probably 15 Gladius Fights events online, I assumed that the stare-downs had been edited out for time purposes. They are not. There was no stare down.

“Fighter are you ready? Fighter are you ready?”

Staring at a man who’s been training to hurt you can do one of two things to you in my opinion: Either you freeze up inside and forget everything you learned, or you rise to the occasion and fight with all you have. Luckily for me, it was the latter.

After a back-and-forth two and a half round battle that almost saw me strangled on more than one occasion, I scored the TKO victory.

I think the most valuable thing that I have learned so far in training and competing is that, contrary to popular opinion, MMA is a team sport. Without your team, the guys that you sweat and bleed with, without the guys that are exposed to all of your strengths and weaknesses, without the guys that you confide your greatest fears about fighting with, you will always be just another guy who wanted to be a great fighter but never was.

Jesse’s second step in his career will take place at Gladius Fights 22 in Cortland, New York, on July 30. For more information, you can visit their Facebook page.