YOU GET WHAT YOU GET

WEEK OF 5/18/26

 

I have such a polarizing relationship with combat sports.  On one hand, it’s this amazing vehicle for self improvement, self discovery, and a path to achieve the extraordinary.

On the other hand, it’s rife with disappointment, injury, and sacrifice.  And nothing — and I mean NOTHING — is certain.

Saturday night our guy Tim Green put together an excellent performance off of an excellent fight camp, an excellent weight cut, and an excellent warmup.  He scored a knockdown in the first round and landed some big shots over the next five rounds en route to earning, or so we thought, the Freedom championship title.  The judges didn’t see it that way, and we walked away with a split decision draw.

And that’s just how it is.  You get what you get, and you have to accept it and move on.

As a coach I’ve seen this a bunch of times before (I think I’ve cornered 400+ fights at this point).  The athletes do everything that they can and are supposed to do, but the third party officials have the final say, and they aren’t perfect.

I’m not here to say they got it wrong on Saturday.  That’s not my place.  But more so to say that no matter how hard we work, no matter how well we perform, sometimes we just don’t get what we want or deserve.

And this is in combat sports, in relationships, in work, and in life.

As we write the story of our lives, sometimes plot twists sneak in and take us in unexpected — and disappointing — directions.  In the moment we can feel derailed, but in hindsight we realize that we have always been on the path that was intended for us.  The losses we take inform us on how to navigate the world in a smarter way, and help others do so as well.  The disappointments sometimes deflect us in other directions, where even prizes await that were otherwise unseen.  And on and on.

So, you get what you get.  That’s all there is.  And it’s up to each of us to make the most out of all of it.