Joseph Benavidez knows the odds might be stacked against him right now, but said he’ll keep a one-day-at-a-time mentality toward getting another crack at his dream.

Benavidez (19-4 MMA, 6-2 UFC) this past Saturday lost his second shot at the UFC’s flyweight title when he was knocked out by Demetrious Johnson (19-2-1 MMA, 7-1-1 UFC) in the first round at UFC on FOX 9.

Not only was it the first time Benavidez had been stopped in his pro career, but it happened in front of his hometown crowd in Sacramento, where he has long been a member of the famed Team Alpha Male camp.

Benavidez’s four losses have come against only two opponents – bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz and 125-pound titleholder Johnson. In more cases than not in the UFC, when a fighter proves to be vulnerable to “Kryptonite,” so to speak, the promotion tends to shy away from giving him a third chance at what ails him.

In this case, the Kryptonite for Benavidez might just be Johnson. But that isn’t going to keep him from doing what he has to do to get another shot at the title – or even another shot at “Mighty Mouse,” whether he has the belt or not.

“(Deserving another title shot is) a hard thing to prove at this moment, losing to the guy twice,” Benavidez on Tuesday told MMAjunkie Radio. “But my life has prepared me for this. That was a good statement by (Johnson), but I don’t know if that’s going to make it any easier. I obviously want to fight for the title, and I want to fight Demetrious again, win or lose for him. All I can do is take it one day at a time and one fight at a time, and beat up as many people as I can. And if I deserve it, they’ll give it to me.”

After being knocked out by Johnson, Benavidez said he suffered a concussion. A couple days later, the best medicine for it was proving to be bowl after bowl of cereal.

The physical part of the loss, he said, including a post-concussive “cloud” that concussion sufferers often talk about afterward, was about to pass.

“I actually feel good,” he said. “I went and got scanned and everything came out good. I had a concussion. I got some good rest. But this morning, I woke up and felt like the ‘cloud’ was kind of lifted off.”

But it’s the mental part of losing that Benavidez said he was still coming to grips with.

The loss, he said, he can accept. But there was disappointment in other ways. And worse, he said there’s basically no lesson he can take out of the fight to improve on for next time.

“I’m just confused about what happened,” he said. “Most of all, I feel like I was (ripped off) from a good fight. I didn’t get to perform my best and fight the best guy in the world in front of millions of people. They don’t know how I could have performed. I know I was going to have a great performance. That stuff doesn’t happen every day, and that’s what you dream about (fighting) on FOX. That’s the crappy part. A loss is a loss. Winning the world title would’ve been awesome. Fighting ‘Mighty Mouse’ and just competing in there was fun.

“The losses happen, but there’s nothing to learn from it. I know to not get hit in the face. There’s nothing to take away from it.”

So Benavidez will move forward the one way he knows how. It’s something he did after his first loss to Cruz in 2009. Then he went out and dominated Rani Yahya and Miguel Torres to get a title shot against Cruz. After he lost that one, by split decision, he won three more, dropped to flyweight and got his shot at Johnson the first time.

And after losing that one by split call, he again went on a run to fight his way back. He’s determined to do that again.

“Life, no matter what, is a long road with obstacles to bounce back from,” Benavidez said. “Some are worse, some are easier, but that’s what life’s all about. I was against the best in the world (Saturday) night, and in between I got caught with a punch I didn’t see coming. What else do you do? You just stay positive. That’s the only thing this fight tried to do to me.

“Bounce back, forget it, look forward to the future, and know there’s still good things to come. I’ve accomplished some things, but I’m not satisfied.”

For complete coverage of UFC on FOX 9, stay tuned to the UFC Events section of the site.

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