It takes over 20 hours to drive from Houston to Las Vegas, but Ike Villanueva enjoyed getting some time to reflect on where he’s been and where he’s going.
“There's a lot of thinking on the drive from Texas to Vegas, and I cleared my mind,” he said.
The Houston native was just removed from his first loss since 2017, a May defeat at the hands of Chase Sherman in his UFC debut, and while the short-notice bout cemented the thought in his mind that he belonged at the elite level of MMA, he also knew he had some changes to make if he wanted to stay there.