UFC Featherweight Mike Brown Learns His Lesson About Overtraining

Mike Brown

Mike Brown is an unlucky man. For someone with as much skill as he possesses, it’s odd to see him go through so many ups and downs over his past eight fights.

First, at WEC 41, he successfully defended his WEC featherweight championship in a second fight against Urijah Faber. Then, he got trounced by Jose Aldo and lost the belt. You think he might be back on track following a finish over Anthony Morrison, but then he got knocked out by Manny Gamburyan at WEC 48.

Sprinkle on one more win with two subsequent losses and you have the roller coaster ride that has been Mike Brown’s career over the last two years. The up-and-down motion would make the common man suffer from nausea.

Tough luck.

“I think it’s a bit of bad luck,” Brown told MMAWeekly Radio Weekend Edition when discussing his recent peaks and valleys. “I have a lot of good, strong positions and I hit really hard, so I always have the capability of finishing people. That can happen any time and when it happens quick, it looks really dramatic and good. So, I’m really dangerous in that way. If I string a couple of those together, it looks like, ‘damn, this guy can’t be beat.’ But sometimes they don’t always go that way.”

In one of his most recent losses, Brown took on dangerous featherweight Diego Nunes. The result of the fight saw Brown dropping a split decision to the Brazilian fighter, while some may think that it could have easily gone the other way. But not Brown. In fact, the American Top Team fighter gives credit to his former opponent, admitting that Nunes won the fight fair and square. Where Brown feels he went wrong was his preparation for Nunes. Spending too much time working his body in training camp was a key factor in Brown’s inability to pull out the win over Nunes.

“I felt Diego won that fight, honestly,” Brown admitted. “Going in, I overtrained for it. I was getting really tired in training camp. It was a strange thing and it happened in the fight. I was hoping it wasn’t going to. And I faded.”

Now, the Brown roller coaster has hit a peak with a recent win over Nam Phan at UFC 133: Evans vs. Ortiz. The featherweight pulled out a unanimous decision over a fighter that a lot of people gave the advantage to straight out of the gate.

What was different this time around? Well, sparing sessions got cut down a bit.

“I wasn’t overtraining,” Brown said about his approach to the Pham fight. “I stopped sparring so much. I was sparring nearly every day before.”

In sports, it’s important that you give your body ample time to rest and recover before going out and putting it through hell again. Brown put his body through the ringer before his recent losses, causing him to fatigue more than he’s used to. It didn’t make any sense before, but now, he knows better.

“It was taking a toll on my body,” Brown said about his training. “I was banging up my joints, tearing up the muscles so much all the time, that I wasn’t really giving them a time to heal. So, in the middle of camp, I started getting in worse and worse shape.”

Now, with an opportunity to recover and focus on resting his body, Mike Brown is patiently anticipating his next call from UFC office personnel offering his next fight. This time, he’ll be sure to try and take the opportunity with the best timing and not take a fight too soon.

But if he gets an offer he can’t refuse, who knows what he’ll do.

“I don’t want to fight until at least November,” he said. “November, December, January would be good for me. So, I’m not looking to fight next month by any means, although, if Sean (Shelby) called me, I don’t know what I’d say.”

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