Facing your "Mirs", where do Lashley and King Mo go from here?

February 2^nd, 2008. UFC 81. Brock Lesnar made his UFC debut against a former UFC Champion and BJJ black belt Frank Mir in only his 2^nd MMA fight ever. Lesnar touted a substantial amateur wrestling background winning an NCAA Division I wrestling title just eight years ago. While he knew he was ready for the big time, he stepped into the cage with an arena full of doubters. Unfortunately for Lesnar, he tapped out to Mir in 90 seconds after dominating for most of the fight. He was contrite after the loss, vowing to go back and "get on the horse". While many took those words as cliché fighter-speak, Lesnar was earnest. He got back in the gym, revitalized his training and stepped his game up. 19 months later, he was the UFC World Heavyweight Champion.

On Saturday's Strikeforce event, we saw two of the bigger names in the sport suffer their first taste of defeat inside the cage. Bobby Lashley, like Lesnar is a former WWE wrestler, lost by ref stoppage at the end of the 2^nd round to Chad Griggs. "King" Mo Lawal, the former Strikeforce Light Heavyweight Champion, also suffered defeat by losing his title to Rafael Cavalcante via TKO during the 3^rd round. Where both men go from here is unknown, but it will determine their futures.

I recently wrote about accepting your defeat, placing it in an internal locus of control, and using that to better yourself. To give an example:

 During a college social psychology course, we discussed locus of control in relation to dating and how one deals with rejection and how that will affect your future success. Those that saw the rejection as a result of something being wrong with themselves (like looks, approach, etc.) were more successful in future success than those that saw the rejection as a result of uncontrollable variables (like "he/she is a bitch", he/she was having a bad day, etc.).

 And the same applies in MMA. We've seen time and time again fighters making excuses for losses and not focusing on themselves and how they caused the loss. Tito Ortiz is notorious for this after losses, constantly attributing poor performance to injuries or a "bad training camp".

Now how does this apply to last night's two combatants? You can first look at Bobby Lashley, if you read my earlier piece on the event's officials; you'll note that there were two pretty big errors that occurred during this fight. Lashley's cut was not properly taken care of (which led to bleeding all over) and the fight was a) stood up while Lashley was in mount and b) the fight was not put back into the correct position. Now Lashley can look at this fight in two different ways. He can point the finger of blame at shoddy officiating and bad cutmen and try and pass this loss off as being out of his control. Or he can seize this defeat, go back to American Top Team, work on his deficiencies and come out a better Bobby Lashley. I don't know Mr. Lashley that well, but as a fan of MMA, I hope that he does the latter.

As for Mo Lawal, there were not that many, if any, blatant external factors to try and "pass blame to". It was his first main event; it was also his first title defense. The demand for his time has greatly increased due to his championship status. All of those are reasons to why Lawal or others around him can say he lost. Or Mr. Lawal can say "Hey, I lost, he was better than me tonight. I have a couple areas in my game that I need to work on and I'm going to fix them." To his credit, that's exactly what Lawal said following his loss. And it sounded good. To be honest, I believe him when he says it. Having watched dozens of interviews of his, Lawal is a student of the game of MMA. Don't let the jewelry and the entourages fool you, he's one of the most cerebral fighters in terms of recognizing what does and does not work in MMA. If I had to make a prediction, I would say that Mr. Lawal will come back from this a better "King Mo" and rule the MMA world with an iron fist.

Follow me on Twitter.

SBN coverage of Strikeforce: Houston