Jason Knight Not Stressing UFC 214 Loss Heading Into UFC Fight Night 123

Jason Knight spoke with MMAjunkie ahead of his fight with Gabriel Benitez at UFC Fight Night 123 about his UFC 214 loss and more. Highlights are below:

On his loss to Ricardo Lamas at UFC 214: “[jokingly] I don’t get what you’re talking about, man. Things went exactly as they were supposed to…Every time I get in that cage I pray to God: Let the best man win. If it’s not me, it’s no big deal. Just let me go out there and fight to the best of my ability. I made a critical mistake in that fight. I got open with my hands down, but it’s a big learning experience. At that level, top 15, those guys, they’re animals. They’re a whole different breed than the rest of the cliques. You’ve got to be flawless. You can’t make any mistakes. I learned more from that fight than I have any of my wins – that’s the good thing about it.”

On not being worried about wins and losses so much: “Some fighters, they’re so hell-bent on, they can’t lose. They’ve got to win everything,’ I don’t give a (expletive). I’m out here ready to fight. I’m out to here to have fun and get paid doing it. That’s just the way that it goes. I made $30,000 to get TKO’d. Who the hell gets to do that? It didn’t really bother me. They know just as well as I do: (Lamas) is a top-three guy, that’s some big shoes to fill, and I asked for that fight. It wasn’t a short-notice fight, but I didn’t have a complete training camp for it. That was something I wanted to try to do. I wanted to test myself at that level. I had the skills to beat him. I have the tools to beat him. He was flawless; I wasn’t.”

On the matchup with Benitez: “They know I’m at the level I need to be, and they’re just giving me this fight as kind of a warm-up. Of course, Gabriel Benitez is a tough fighter. He’s going to be a hard fight for me, but I think they’re trying to give me him, so that if I beat him, then they’re going to give me that next step up. They just wanted to assess where my skills are at, where my brain’s at after taking that tough loss. I’m not like the rest of these guys. I don’t get butt-hurt after a loss. It doesn’t bother me. I’m right back to the same guy 30 minutes later. I think I might have been upset for 30 seconds and then it was right back to happy-go-lucky Jason.”

On his goal for the fight: “I belong with everybody that’s inside that top 15. I think I’m above some of their levels for sure. I just got to get to that flawless stage where I made no mistakes, I made no errors. Once I get to that fight IQ where I think consciously about keeping my hands up, think consciously about moving the right direction and stuff like that, I think after that the skill is already there. It’s just the little, tiny little nitpicking things that could cost you the fight.”