Strikeforce HW Bobby Lashley taking the Shane Carwin approach to embracing his first loss

As I have written before, the most imporant thing about a loss is how you deal with it. I've written before about the "locus of control":

In MMA, losing is an inevitability. The game is ever-changing and evolving. Styles make fights and with so many ways to go down in defeat, if you fight at a high-level of competition, you will eventually end up on the losing end. With the recent first "real" loss of MMA demi-god Fedor Emelianenko (as his actual first loss has basically been bleached from the annals of history), fans and fighters alike realize that everyone, no matter how revered they are, no matter how skilled they appear, everyone will lose. The true question is "How will they deal with the loss?"

"It's called locus of control. Something happens, you lose the fight, but how do you make sense of that? Is it, the ref blew the call or the guy was greased or you took the fight on short notice? That's external locus of control. Internal is, 'You know, I didn't execute. My corner said to take him down and I didn't. They said circle right and I circled to his strong side. I did this.' The research is pretty clear that people who attribute it to something they did – whether it's true or not, it doesn't matter – they're going to be more successful than the people who constantly talk about bad luck or the ref or bias or whatever."

Specifically when it comes to an MMA fighter recovering from his first loss (which is usually the hardest), I've dubbed that process "Facing your 'Mir' (a reference to UFC Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar recovering from his loss to Frank Mir)". I specifically wrote about Lashley after his loss to Griggs at Strikeforce: Houston.

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.

Well, as it turns out, we have our answer. Lashley spoke to Ariel Helwani on today's MMA Hour:

"When I went to the hospital afterwards, they said I was really dehydrated. I went to hospital on Thursday before the fight because I wasn't feeling very good. I was just sluggish and not feeling good, so I went to urgent care and got checked out. I thought I was going to be okay. We didn't do any blood work, but they gave me an IV because they said I was a little dehydrated then and when I went in there and fought I didn't have anything in me."

Lashley also said that he had mononucleosis going into the fight, and afterward had a round of blood work done to find out why he was so sluggish in the fight with Griggs.

"I didn't even know what was going on there. Because when he called me back up he was like, 'Let's check out that cut.' ...Then we checked out the cut...and then he stood us up. I was in full mount, and as far as a position of advantage I don't think you can get a better advantage than full mount. That's not my decision."

As you can see in the above paragraph, Lashley has more excuses than a little bit. Dehydration, mono, "I got stood up"; all excuses for his loss. Maybe those are valid excuses. Actually, the last one about being stood up is valid. However, that isn't the point. It's not about what happened in your loss, it's about focusing on why YOU lost and using that to build yourself as a better fighter. Lashley clearly isn't understanding this. The best fighters, the Jon Jones', the Rashad Evans', the Brock Lesnar's, they take their losses and learn from them. Lashley, if you're serious about growing as an MMA fighter, forget the excuses, forget the external factors. Look at you and what you did and why you lost. Look in the mirror and face your "Mir".