UFC Fight Night 199 winner Gerald Meerschaert reflects on 2021 comeback year

LAS VEGAS – Gerald Meerschaert is certainly a frontrunner for “Comeback Fighter of the Year” after a banner 2021.

Meerschaert (34-14 MMA, 9-6 UFC) picked up his third-straight submission win of the year when he came from behind to choke out Dustin Stoltzfus this past Saturday at UFC Fight Night 199. It was a perfect and rather poetic way for Meerschaert to cap off his great year after a rough 2020.

He started 2020 with a submission win over Deron Winn, but was then stopped in back-to-back bouts by Ian Heinisch in June and Khamzat Chimaev in September. The 17-second knockout loss to Chimaev in particular had a pretty rough impact on Meerschaert.

“MMA is a crazy, unforgiving sport,” Meerschaert told reporters, including MMA Junkie, at a post-fight news conference. “Anything can happen. I got clipped pretty good in my fight with Heinisch and then after that I got put out pretty bad. That was a scary one to watch for me later on because I saw later that I was up in the cage and everything, I didn’t wake up until I was back here somewhere (points backstage).

“So that whole thing of me standing there, I don’t remember none of that, so that’s when I was like OK, I need to take a break. I need to make sure my head is good and credit to the UFC, they had no problem with that. They’re like, ‘Yeah, get your head right, make sure everything is functioning’ and that seemed to do the trick. Got my head square on my shoulders, I knew I still had a lot of really hard work to do and just kept my nose to the grindstone.”

To see the full interview with Meerschaert, check out the video above.