Carlos Condit Opens Up About UFC 219: ‘Maybe I Didn’t Necessarily Want To Be There That Night?’

Carlos Condit will return to the UFC Octagon this Saturday when he faces Alex Oliveira at UFC 219 in Phoenix, Arizona.

Condit last fought at UFC 219 last December when he was defeated by Neil Magny via a unanimous decision. There was plenty of excitement for Condit’s return ahead of the fight, but on the night things just didn’t click and he wound up clearly losing the fight on the scorecards.

Speaking on ‘5 Rounds With Brett Okamoto’ this week, Condit explained how he felt before and after the fight and how he just wasn’t himself in the Octagon that evening.

“I didn’t watch the fight for nearly a month after,” Condit said. “I was super disappointed and I knew it wasn’t me out there.

“Then when I went and watched it, I thought it looked that bad, but it didn’t look that bad either.

“I looked lazy and lackadaisical out there and I don’t know exactly what that was. Maybe I didn’t necessarily want to be there that night?

“What I took away from that fight was that I needed to get right mentally. I needed to be in and all in, or find something else to do.

“So I worked on that and it was a big part of this training camp.”

“I’ve been focusing on the mental aspects in my training camp and that’s always been a strong part of my game in the past, but in the last couple of years it’s been iffy.”

Condit admitted that he knew was going to be at the races as early as the first round and that he wasn’t in the right mental frame of mind for the fight.

He also added that his preparations might not have been as good as they could’ve been.

“It was very apparent once the fight started, I was like ‘oh s***,'” Condit said.

“I trained hard, but I didn’t train like I’d trained for other training camps and it’s hard to fake that thing.

“Once you set that bar at a certain threshold to do anything less, maybe consciously you don’t know it, but maybe unconsciously you do and it’s going to come out and it’s going to show.

“When you get down into the nitty gritty and step into a cage against someone else, it’s kinda like the proving ground and there’s no fake, whatever you did is going to show and whatever you feel is going to show.”

With that all now behind him, Condit is now focused on getting back to winning ways this Saturday. Oliveira will no doubt provide stiff competition, but Condit feels that he’s going to head into the bout with his mind in the right place.

“I feel like I’ve learned from it and I feel like I’ve put together a great camp this time around,” Condit said.

“I feel different, I feel much better this time around.”