Jamie Varner declares “I’m back” following win over Edson Barboza
Former WEC lightweight champion, Jamie Varner has been speaking further about his recent resurgence which culminated in a first round TKO win over Edson Barboza last month at UFC 146 in Las Vegas, Nevada, and it’s clear the fighter is brimming with confidence.
Speaking via MMAWeekly.com, Varner said:
“That’s what I told me trainers, I just want to make one more run. We’ll call this like my final journey, when it’s done it’s done, I’ll retire. I couldn’t confidently say I was going to win. I knew I could take a beating, I knew I could stand in front of somebody, I could take a beating.”
“I was not supposed to win that fight. I was like a 5 to 1 underdog. It’s surreal, I can’t believe people want to talk to me now. I understand people like winners, but I think the fans could see there was something different about me. That I had the passion and desire that the fans wanted to see from me, I had lost that passion and desire and they could see that I got it back. Honestly, I’m back. It was like I’m back but the first thing was we did it. My team, we did it. The people behind me believed in me more than I believed in myself. They’re the ones that came up with the game plan and believed I could do what I did.”
“I attribute a lot of that to just hitting rock bottom, losing my job, and just kind of going on this journey and being alone. It’s really lonely down there at the bottom, it’s a crappy place to be. But it shows you what type of person you are to be down there and to fight, scratch, claw your way back up and that’s what I did. That’s what I was prepared to do.”
Varner was down on his luck a little over a year ago and decided to even retire from the sport of mixed martial arts. It didn’t last long and he soon got back on the horse, picking up back-to-back wins before earning a recall to the UFC. Despite being handed an insurmountable task in Edson Barboza, the former WEC champion shone through again and picked up a first round TKO victory.
By Michael Pepper. (Follow me on Twitter)
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