WEDNESDAY, FEB. 3

Logan's second blog entry:

Another Minnesota MMA event has come and gone, and I miss the competition already. I don't need to go over the results for you since we have some sort of a news service to cover that, so I'll just give you some thoughts.

My fight brings a few laughs when I look back. I have a tendency to perform at the level of my opponents, so it isn't surprising that I sacrificed technique for aggressiveness. Since I hadn't really gotten any cage time since the Santiago fight, I wouldn't have been surprised by just about anything that came out of my corner. Sometimes being over aggressive works and other times it doesn't have such great results. This time, it worked.

Fighting on the same event as fighters that you coach is always a tricky thing. I chose not to corner my fighters that night, and now I am left wondering whether or not I made the right choice. I can blame myself for any mistakes made by my fighters, but that is probably giving me more credit than I deserve.

Corners really can win a fight for the competitor because they have the outsider's view of the fight and can see things that the fighter can't see from the in-cage perspective. But this also takes practice. I practice this simply by pretending I am a cornerman during practice some days. I'll pick a person and coach them just as if they were in a fight. This gets the person used to listening to someone while trying to compete, and it helps the cornerman learn how to explain movements in a manner that the fighter can follow while still concentrating on his opponent.

The Heath Rud loss was a tough one for the team. We have high hopes for Heath in the future, but I knew that this particular match up was a toss up. Heath won the first round and had his chances get the victory, but his opponent was able to control him on the ground after rocking him on the feet. It takes a combination of all skills to be victorious. Heath will be back in the gym as soon as he can, and I think he'll recover from this loss and move on as a better fighter.

It is always interesting to see how fighters react to losing a match. It is good to hate losing, but it is also a fact of life for all fighters who compete for long enough. Most of the guys who move into MMA come from a prior competitive discipline, so they recognize that losses happen. Losing always hurts, but, if a fighter lets a loss affect them too much, it can keep them from coming back from the loss to achieve victory in the future.

There are always lots of interesting people to watch at the fights, but sometimes people are just a bit too interesting. We had one guy come into the locker room after the fight just to yell at me. Evidently he was a fan of my opponent, so he wasn't pleased with me. It is nice to have a team that takes care of such things without me even rising from my seat or breaking my smile.

— Logan Clark