One Championship's Troy Worthen Values Personal Growth over Perfect Record Following First Defeat

There are things more important to “Pretty Boy” than a perfect record.

In his latest One Championship’s appearance, Troy Worthen (7-1, 3-1 One) was handed the first loss of his professional mixed martial arts career by Russian veteran Yusup Saadulaev (20-5-1 1NC, 6-2 One). “Pretty Boy” stated that being undefeated doesn’t matter to him since he understands that losing is part of the game when you clash with the best guys in this sport. However, he believes that he underperformed that night at One: Collision Course.

“The loss is really not that big of a deal,” he said. “A lot of people kind of base their value or their worth in this sport based on their record, and that’s not me. I’m a martial artist first. How I base myself is based on how I carry myself throughout life and, ‘I am my improving in martial arts?’ and, ‘How do I compete?’ The loss is really not that big of a deal to me. It’s more so the performance. I felt like I performed very poorly. You know, that just wasn’t me. I was in the wrong headspace, thinking too much about making sure I get the win and the ranking instead of just going out there and expressing myself to the full extent. I felt like I held back a lot in that fight, I just didn’t compete up to par.”

Worthen will now attempt to bounce back when he takes on Shuya Kamikubo (11-1-1, 4-0 One) on the upcoming One on TNT 3 card, which will go down on April 21.

“Shuya is a very similar fight to Saadulaev,” he said when asked about his next opponent. “He’s a very pressure-forward grappler, he pretty much tries to grind down his opponents. I wouldn’t say he’s much of a submission threat. He’s more of a control, ground-and-pound-based grappler. I would say Yusup maybe has a little bit better striking or even shows it more. It’s actually a pretty similar matchup, so it’s pretty easy for me to transition from fight to fight.”

Tudor Leonte started writing about mixed martial arts in 2013 for Italian media outlets. His journey with Sherdog begun in 2018 and now he covers One Championship and countless European shows. You can follow him on Twitter @Tudor_leo.