Louis Smolka was having a rough time.

He’d been cut from the UFC following a four-fight losing streak. He’d just moved from his home state of Hawaii to California, hoping for a fresh start at a new gym. He was staying with his manager, Jason House, and he was feeling a little bit down.

So Smolka (11-5) did what he’d usually done in such situations: He had a few drinks. When his manager saw that, he wasn’t pleased.

“He kind of yelled at me,” Smolka told MMAjunkie. “But he put it to me in a way I haven’t forgotten. He told me, ‘You have nothing to be celebrating right now.’ That really resonated with me. Because the truth is I had really messed my career up.”

Smolka can admit it now. For a long time, he wasn’t taking his job seriously enough. If he had, he probably wouldn’t have been drinking to the point of blacking out almost every night, then rolling into the gym hungover the next day. He wouldn’t have been treating his pro fighting career like it was just another job where showing up was enough.

“I took it for granted,” Smolka said. “If I was a kid working a desk job, it wouldn’t matter if I drank a bunch in my twenties. But as a professional athlete, you can’t live like that. You just can’t. Your body doesn’t function the same. If you’re training hungover all the time, it’s going to mess with you.”

Smolka didn’t see the problem at first, he said, in part because he’d won fights before, even while drinking throughout his training camp. But after four straight wins in the UFC, the competition got tougher. Soon he couldn’t get away with the things he had before. He started losing fights, and the next thing he knew he was cut from the UFC.

That, Smolka said, is when he realized he needed to make some changes.

The first was moving to Southern California to train with Team Oyama. There, Smolka said, he was subjected to a whole new intensity, and one that was incompatible with his drinking habits.

“Back at my old gym, because we’re all friends, people would let you slide,” Smolka said. “If you’re hungover or whatever, it’s fine, they’ll let you slack. But over here, a new gym and new atmosphere, people don’t let you get away with that stuff. It’s like, you can show up hungover if you want, but they’re going to run you into the ground and beat you down.”

Smolka had his last drink in mid-January, he said. Getting sober forced him to look at his situation with clear eyes. He had to confront just how badly he’d messed up, and this time he didn’t have alcohol to numb the pain.

Now, with his comeback slated for Saturday night’s Gladiator Challenge event in Rancho Mirage, Calif., Smolka faces an unfamiliar situation. For the first time since 2013, he’s headed into a non-UFC bout. At this point, he still has more UFC fights than non-UFC fights on his record, and there’s a part of this new beginning that feels like a chapter he’d rather close quickly.

“This is odd,” Smolka said. “Getting ready for a fight that’s not a UFC fight, it feels like a dark time in my career. Like I need to do this and get through it and never talk about it again.”

Standing in his way is Ralph Acosta (18-12). But, Smolka said, with a win here, plus maybe one more on the small circuit, he’s confident the UFC will bring him back.

And this time, he insisted, he won’t be too hungover to appreciate the opportunity for what it is.

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