Michael Chiesa is no longer considering retirement ahead of UFC 310 and reveals “mental issues” he has overcome

Michael Chiesa will continue to fight for a while.

Chiesa will face Max Griffin in a preliminary bout at UFC 310 on December 7 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. After defeating Tony Ferguson at UFC Saudi Arabia in August, Chiesa shared that he probably would have given up if he had lost the fight.

With a fresh fighting spirit and using the comfort of his home base to his advantage, Chiesa has it right as he prepares for his 20th trip to the octagon.

“No, my uncle told me to quit (and retire),” Chiesa told MMA Fighting. “I just know that when I talk about wanting to have a career before the Tony fight, it’s because this sport is 99 percent mental. So I’ve had mental problems in two of the three fights in this losing streak, and if I couldn’t correct that by now, it would be imminent.

“But that won’t happen on December 7th. The result doesn’t change anything. I still want to compete, especially with UFC Seattle on the horizon. Dana kind of teased this at a press conference: Do you think I’m going to miss an opportunity to fight in Seattle again? Hell no. And at the end of the day, Max Griffin won’t beat me. It just won’t happen. I know I have a tough battle ahead of me. I know what I have to do to get the job done, but I’m here for it. I’m excited and it’s all about my head being in the right space. If my head wasn’t in the right place, I’m in for a tough fight with Max Griffin against an extremely tough fighter, but my head is in the right place. My training has been good, my body feels great, everything is falling into place to win this fight.

“So I have no doubt that I will win this fight and then I will patiently wait for the announcement from UFC Seattle.”

Prior to the win over Ferguson, Chiesa had lost three straight, including stoppage losses to Vicente Luque and Kevin Holland and a decision loss to Sean Brady. Chiesa was fine with his performance against Brady, but it was the Holland fight that made it clear he wasn’t making the most of his abilities – especially from a mental perspective.

As he prepares to face another veteran welterweight in Griffin, Chiesa can see exactly where something went wrong and how it was fixed.

“For me, fight day is always about fighting fear,” Chiesa explained. “In the battle camp, everyone fights against fear. Most fighters are pretty honest about how sometimes you think about the consequences of a fight, whether you’re going to get hurt and things like that, and I think I just thought about it too much and I think that was the problem (Training( in Las Vegas. I’m alone – I have friends there, but it’s not the same as home, I’m with my wife, I’m with my dog, I’m with my team, I’m with my people every day , where in Vegas I get ready to go to the gym and I’m whole alone.

“So I was kind of trapped in my own thoughts, and when you’re trapped in your own thoughts, things start to snowball, and that snowball turns into an avalanche, and the next thing you know, that this avalanche fell This mountain is preparing to wipe you out. I think it’s just me, I just think too much about the worst outcomes. I’m very aware of what could go right and what could go wrong, like with every fight in my career, and I just think that the times that I’m alone in Las Vegas, those things really often seem bigger than what they are are. It’s just not a good place to live.

“Fear is good. Fear makes you sharp, but you don’t want to fight in fear. When I go back and watch Kevin Holland’s fight, I fought him in fear, and you can’t fight in fear. When you fight, really bad things happen to you. You must fight fearlessly. When you fight fearlessly. I feel like you don’t put yourself in danger all that much, but when you fight in fear, you’re just begging to, for lack of better words, mess up. So that will simply never happen again. Over and over again.”