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Yes, at 34, Morales is the adult in the room.
“I want to be a good representation of the sport,” he said. “For instance, when I was fighting on some of these regional shows when I first got released from UFC, I see the way some of the athletic commissions look at some of the up-and-coming guys and it almost feels like they think less of us. So I try to make sure that I’m a professional and I put forward a good image that represents all of us. There’s some bad ones out there, but we’re not that bad. I think we deserve just as much respect as their co-workers and sometimes it seems like they condescend and speak down to us a little bit.”
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It’s frustrating for any athlete to be going through that, especially more than 30 years since the days when mixed martial arts was a niche and outlaw sport. But you wonder how someone like Morales can be thrown in with the “barroom brawler” crowd when he is one of the most professional fighters on the roster. But he tries not to spend too much time on such matters. There’s real business to tend to, and after nearly two years outside the UFC, he was ready to take care of that business against Lapilus.
“There was a little bit of frustration, without trying to make excuses for myself,” he said when asked what went wrong that night in the Accor Arena. “I try to make sure I’m doing things better the next time and I think I can do things better with full camps. I was looking at all of my UFC fights and the majority of them – I think all but one – are short notice fights. And I think as much as I’m down for short notice, I’m not doing myself any favors by jumping on short notice opportunities. So I told myself, okay, let’s get full camps, let’s do things right. This is the second go. I’m going to make sure that all my chips are in and if I got to leave bits and pieces of me out there in the cage, I’m doing that. And that’s best with a full camp.”
