LAS VEGAS – Any fan who’s followed MMA long enough knows that every athlete deals with emotional turmoil at some point in their career. For Dan Ige, that moment happened after recent back-to-back losses.
After putting together a six-fight winning streak in the featherweight division, Ige (15-5 MMA, 7-4 UFC) got the ranked matchups he was looking for. The results have turned the other way, though, as he’s lost to Josh Emmett, Chan Sung Jung and Calvin Kattar, with a 22-second knockout of Gavin Tucker sandwiched in between.
Despite going the distance in all of his defeats, Ige saw no silver linings. He wanted the wins but came to the realization he wasn’t fighting for the right reasons after the birth of his son.
“You can say I’m 0-2 in my last two fights, but I see myself as 0-0,” Ige told MMA Junkie and other reporters at Wednesday’s UFC Fight Night 207 media day. “It sounds cheesy to say, but I’m a new person, and I’m starting fresh, and I’m having fun with this again. I grew kind of bitter over the sport over the last year, and I put a lot of pressure on myself when I became a dad and I had to financially provide for my family, and that was just an extra pressure I didn’t really need.”
Ige’s most recent bout was a unanimous decision loss to Emmett at UFC 269 in December. He’s spent his 2022 figuring out how he can be better moving forward in his career and said he pursued every training avenue available to him, including spending one month in Colorado living with Justin Gaethje.
Getting back on the winning track will be no easy feat when Ige fights undefeated rising prospect Movsar Evloev in Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 207 co-main event. The card takes place at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas and streams on ESPN+.
No one has been able to solve the riddle that is Evloev (15-0 MMA, 5-0 UFC) to this point in his career, and Ige relishes the opportunity.
“That’s what my legacy is going to be at the end of the day: The guy whose fought anyone and everyone,” Ige said. “I was just saying I would literally be a coward if I tried to choose an easy route to the top. I want to be the guy that’s known that’s fought the best in the world. That’s all I’m out here to do. To test myself and to grow as a fighter and to eventually reach the top.
“I find some type of pleasure to give a guy his first loss. That’s what I look at in all of this when they offered me that opponent. I’m usually not one to turn down a fight. I don’t think I’ve ever turned down a fight actually.”
Evloev, No. 14 in the latest USA TODAY Sports/MMA Junkie featherweight rankings, has a lot to gain going into the matchup with No. 12 Ige. He’s made bold claims that he will be the first to finish Ige in MMA competition, and the Hawaiian said he welcomes that approach.
“He can predict whatever he wants,” Ige said. “I’ve never been finished in my career. I’ve fought the absolute killers of killers of this division. He hasn’t finished anyone. He has in the regional promotions but never in the UFC, and he hasn’t fought the high-level guys that I’ve faced and I’ve finished.”
Dan Ige got past being ‘bitter over the sport’ ahead of UFC Fight Night 207
