If a loss makes us question ourselves, two in a row makes us rethink everything. Small sample groups can do that to a person. Double L’s, and both times my own actions have been my undoing. At some point, it's hard not to wonder if self-sabotage isn't an innate character trait.

After the fight I take a photo of my face so I don’t forget. As the dust settles, it hurts more, but I want to feel it and remember it. I don’t want to forget the time I thought I was going to buzzsaw through a grown man and got stopped in my tracks. I want to remember that I can’t fight however I want and still expect to win.

We spend so few minutes of our lives under the bright lights, sometimes it can feel like that world isn’t real. Injuries help remind us that the hurt game is very real. Misfires in game plans can result in much more than just a loss on our record. Dire health consequences are at play, and injuries of the ocular variety are among the most frightening.

Four stitches, a broken orbital, and a bruised ego; that’s the tally list, from least to most painful.

“I feel like anything can happen in there. Josh is such a tough kid, and usually comes out and starts fast and is real dangerous.” Complimentary words from Boetsch post-fight, but they are hardly comforting.

I find my mom after getting stitched to tell her I’m fine. She’s only seen me lose once before. I try to enjoy being with my family if only for a moment, before heading back downstairs to hose off. I go to the shower, the one I’d envisioned coming back to after a win, and rinse the blood. I make the mistake of blowing my nose, and my eye balloons badly. Half my vision is now blocked, and my mind meanders off the fight for a split second, thinking how complex our sinus cavities really are. I think I’ve been knocked silly.

I find myself telling a UFC employee I’m fine, although he hadn’t even asked if I was or not. Maybe it was his reaction when he saw me. The looks are always different after a loss. Perhaps it was me telling myself I was fine.

I go back to the hotel, where everyone from the event is reliving the night. Hiding face has never sat well with me after a defeat. I feign my best act of indifference. It is disingenuous, and exhaustingly so. It’s a defense mechanism, but maintaining a “worse things have happened” response to failures can last only so long in the sports world. The sky may not be falling, but that doesn’t make me any less embarrassed.

Most texts are the same. You’ll get him next time. You’re the better fighter. Etc. I think what they mean is “you have more physical capabilities.” The better fighter on a night is the one who was victorious. That’s the point of fighting, to figure out who’s better. The whole crux of sports is based on execution, and in no competitive event is it ever about what we could have done, or what we are capable of, but rather what it is we actually do.

I wasn’t better that night, and that’s what matters; that night. That’s how I have to look at it because that’s how I grow. Consistency, night in and night out, that’s the only way this works. Mental errors are a tough thing to come to grips with, and it’s best for me to stay positive by refusing to have a fixed mindset when it comes to fight IQ. Instead, I keep one of growth. Physicality can be peaked, athleticism too, but what can never be capped is an ability to learn, if we make an effort to do so.

In a way, there has always been function to these moments. The phone rings less, fairweathers whittled away. We see which friends and girls are glory chasers, who’s here for Josh and who’s here for fight-Josh. Social dynamics among even those closest to us shift. Sports at the highest level often requires selfish behavior to be successful. When success is not delivered, selfishness becomes more difficult to tolerate.

The next win will be sweeter, surely, as victories in the wake of loss always are. I like to imagine a fiber resting somewhere in our brain called the Silver Lining Muscle, and these occasions force us to exert that muscle, strengthening it. I like to think that if nothing else, these moments are an exercise in making the best of things. Experiences like this give perspective, although I prefer the other side of the coin. I wonder sometimes if there is a direct inverse of humility and unwavering confidence, or if a person can co-exist with both.

Then again, maybe the secret is to not come to terms with it, to not realistically accept losses as part of the game. Perhaps the key is to travel to earlier times, when overcoming improbable odds were part of self-expectations, to a period when grandiose visions in my head remained unchallenged.

I ponder the answers over that cold beer I’ve been dreaming of, as I watch the fight several times.

The next morning an x-ray confirms a fracture in my cheek. It is an ass-whooping that I’ll wear for weeks. A UFC employee accompanies me most the day, in the hospital, and steak dinner afterward. My mom and uncle join us, and a woman at a table next to us notices my face.

“Oh, Lord. What happened to your eye?” She looks appalled.

“Well, someone punched me.” I could have thought of something more clever.

“It was a professional fight. We had an event here last night,” the employee says, pointing to his UFC shirt.

“Yeah. I heard about it.” Most people in town had. “Well, maybe you should think about taking up a new profession. I don’t know how anyone does that stuff.” I wonder what my mom sitting nearby thinks of her statement.

I try to think of an answer for her, why it is I live by this thing. My mind drifts somewhere found through subconscious. My favorite line from Conan the Barbarian, the namesake of the foe to have just defeated me:

“Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content… I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

I don’t tell her that. I tell her I can’t stop, not now. I am not done, because I still have something to prove.

And maybe it’s better that way.

Josh Samman is an active UFC Middleweight and author of The Housekeeper: Love, Death, and Prizefighting. You can read all three parts of Prizefighting Chronicles: Brawling a Barbarian here.