For good or bad, one fight can change everything in the world of combat sports. It can make a journeyman a champion, or start a champion on a slide that he never recovers from. And for all the excitement of watching high-level athletes test themselves against each other, it’s really why so many of us watch the sport.
This isn’t baseball, where a pitcher can come back from a bad outing four days later, or football, which offers a seven-day wait before getting a shot at reversing a negative result. In the fight business, a loss can eat at an athlete, sitting him down for several months or maybe forever.