Athletes
Chris Curtis Can't Stop Pushing His Limits
UFC Middleweight Chris Curtis Believes His Discipline And Mindset Will Help Him Outlast The Competition And Be Victorious At UFC 287: Pereira vs Adesanya 2
It was a long and winding road for Chris Curtis to make it to the UFC, but after going 4-1 in his first five Octagon bouts, with three knockouts and a pair of Performance of the Night bonuses, it’s safe to say that the Cincinnati native is going to be sticking around here for a while.
Just don’t tell him that.
“I lose so much sleep over losing any fight,” he said. “And I'm well aware that my job is pretty safe, but the idea of failing absolutely keeps me up at night. It's just me. Because if somebody else is like, ‘Oh, you're going to lose,’ I'll go, ‘Eat dirt, whatever, I don't care.’ But I'm so afraid to not even let myself down, but there are so many people that had to sacrifice to get me to where I am now that it doesn’t just affect me, but I feel like I let those people down, too. And that terrifies me because it has been a very long road to get here, and I can't get over that fear of letting everyone down.”
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So when does that feeling end? With a win on Saturday against Kelvin Gastelum? With a middleweight title shot? With a world championship belt?
“Probably the day they close my casket, honestly,” Curtis said. “I'm always going to be looking for something because I honestly feel like so many people have invested so much into me at this point that I don't know when I get to stop, I don't know when enough is going to be enough. Maybe one day I'll figure it out. Maybe one day I'll just feel like, ‘Hey man, we've earned a break.’ But I think that day comes either when they're closing my casket or the doctor's like, ‘You don't have knees, elbows, shoulders, or a neck anymore; it may be time to slow down. So we'll see which one of those comes first.”
He laughs, knowing how this all may sound to people outside of the fight business while it makes perfect sense to him and the peers who share his same attitude. In essence, if he didn’t feel this way, he may not be where he is right now, which is in the middleweight Top 15 with a big fight on a big card a day from now. That’s enough to make a fighter satisfied, even if only for a moment.
Right? Not exactly. I tell Curtis of a conversation I had with Bernard Hopkins where he told me how he used scenarios that most would describe as unrealistic to motivate him.
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Highlight: Chris Curtis Secures Second TKO In A Month | UFC Fight Night: Font vs Aldo
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Highlight: Chris Curtis Secures Second TKO In A Month | UFC Fight Night: Font vs Aldo
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“Motivation can come in all shapes and forms with me,” Hopkins said. “If I go outside and all my tires are slashed, that’s motivation. When things run smoothly, somebody has to break a glass; somebody has to do something. Some people need bumps in the road to make things happen. It don’t always have to be downright dirty, ignorant stuff; it just has to be some type of motivation. In boxing I’ll never have a problem being motivated because there’s always something in boxing, whether it’s on my end — to be fair — or somebody else’s end. There’s always some motivation that will be brought to me, or some adversity will be brought to me.”
Curtis relates to the words of the legendary “B-Hop,” as well as those spoken by another middleweight great, Marvelous Marvin Hagler.
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“I love Bernard Hopkins and I will never argue against Bernard Hopkins at all,” said Curtis. “And I totally understand what he is saying, and Marvin Hagler said it the best: ‘It's hard to get up and run at 6am when you’re sleeping in silk pajamas.’ It's true, man. When things are going so well, people do lose that fire. And for me, not even that so much is going so well, but part of me is never going to get over that idea that I'm one step away from failure at all times. I get what Hopkins is saying because that fear that one misstep sends me back to square one, as stressful as it is, it makes me be the hardest working guy in the room when I have to be.”
No one will argue with Curtis’ work ethic, which took him through the regional scene, a win on Dana White’s Contender Series in 2018 that didn’t garner him a contract, and finally, the short-notice call to the UFC that saw him cash in with a first-round knockout of Phil Hawes in 2021. That win in Madison Square Garden made all the trials and tribulations worth it.
For a minute. Then it was back to work, because he didn’t want to lose what he worked so hard to get. Yeah, it was that fear again, something that’s been a blessing as much as a curse.
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“I credit it for giving me the discipline that's gotten me this far and what carries me,” he said. “Because motivation fades. Everything else fades. But that fear has taught me a certain discipline that will get you up. Everybody says I overtrained too much, I trained more than anybody. But it's that crippling fear of failure that keeps me moving and doesn't let me stop. At the same time. I'm like, man, my life would be so much better if I could just be like some people and accept ‘Oh, well, what happens happens.’ I can't accept that mentality. It terrifies me. But my life would be so much better if I could.”
Curtis chuckles, recalling his daily conversations with teammate Sean Strickland,
“He’s like, ‘You do too much.’ And he's a guy who can train once a day and be happy. I'm a guy who's got to train four or five times a day and I'm still like, ‘Man, maybe I should be doing more.’”
The day before this interview, Curtis sat in his car for an hour after a full course of training sessions. Not to listen to some tunes or catch up on social media. Just to sit.
“I was just too tired to get out of my car seat in front of my apartment,” he said. “I just sat there for an hour before I had the energy to get up. But those are the days that I need to have to do this. So everyone's a little different. And at this point realized I'm a bit more neurotic than most.”
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Maybe, but then again, his attitude is shared by those who have done great things. That’s got to be a consolation of sorts, or maybe a signal to enjoy this a little bit. Nah, he’s not buying it.
“I won't take a breath because I feel like the moment I take a breath, everything goes wrong,” Curtis laughs. “But the other day I was thinking about this: There are so many people in this sport, when I was coming up, they told me I wasn't good enough, that I wasn’t going to make it, I wasn't going to get signed, blah, blah, blah. And now, I don't know if it's through skill, will or just perseverance, but I've outlasted all of them. I've watched them come and go. I've watched some of them fail. I've watched some of them burn out. Yet here I am, still here. And, you know what? That gives me a massive sense of pride, accomplishment, and a smile.”
View Curtis' Athlete Profile | See What's Happening In The Middleweight Division
I can almost see the smile through the phone. But then the 35-year-old snaps back into focused mode. There’s a fight coming up. There’s always a fight. And Chris Curtis will never get caught with his chin up and hands down.
“I can't take a breath because I feel like the moment I take a breath is when I die. So I recognize how far I've come and how well I've done and I've gotten farther than anybody thought I would. But I’m hesitant to bask in that too much because that's when the universe strikes you down.”
UFC 287: Pereira vs Adesanya 2 took place live from Kayesa Center in Miami, Florida on April 8, 2023. See the Final Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC Fight Pass!
