Being released from the UFC feels like a gut-punch to most fighters but Vince Morales took it as a personal challenge.
While he amassed a respectable record in the promotion, Morales was also sort of learning on the job as he competed against some of the best fighters in the world. When he got his walking papers after two straight losses, Morales didn’t get upset as much as he got fired up.
“I’m a stubborn bastard,” Morales told MMA Fighting. “I don’t like thinking that because I’m not in the UFC or because they say I’m not good enough that I can’t hang and I can’t do what I love. I just kind of doubled down on myself and I think it’s showing.
“I’ve been enjoying it more. When I was in the UFC, I think I was spending a lot of time trying not to lose the fight and now I’m in there to fight and just so happens a win takes care of itself.”
Morales definitely stayed busy during his brief hiatus from the UFC. He fought five times over 15 months while putting together a perfect 5-0 record including four finishes.
That said, Morales admits it wasn’t easy finding quality opponents at first because he had so much UFC experience that he’s not a pushover for anybody. Morales says he accepted nine different opponents at one point before finally getting somebody to sign on the dotted line.
“I was like how the hell are we going to do this?” Morales said. “I was telling my managers and they were like ‘just remain calm, keep focusing on what I’m doing’ and they’ll take care of that stuff. I’m like my bills say otherwise, we need to get to work!
“Thankfully, I got tough fights. It doesn’t make sense for me to go out there and fight winnable fights. I want to fight some tough fights that I don’t know what’s going to happen. Like I’m going to hit you and we’re going to see who can hit harder. That excites me. That keeps me going.”
Following an impressive submission win with a rare Peruvian necktie to beat fellow UFC veteran Hunter Azure in August, Morales kept a close eye on potential opportunities ahead.
He was open for business if PFL or another major organization came calling but Morales always had returning to the UFC at the top of his wish list.
“I think maybe right after my fight with Hunter [Azure] I was looking at upcoming cards and I can’t remember where I saw it but I saw Taylor Lapilus vs. TBA [at UFC Paris],” Morales said. “I was like I’ll keep that in mind.
“I didn’t think about it again but then on Tuesday morning before sparring I opened up Twitter and Tyson Nam, who I’m good friends with, he shared a post saying he wants to step in to fight Taylor Lapilus because they were still looking for an opponent. I told him we could Roshambo for it and the winner goes. I was just kind of jokingly poking fun because that’s where my mind was stepping in for these [short notice fights].”
It wasn’t long after that exchange with Nam that Morales got a call from his manager with news.
“My manager Facetime’s me, which I thought was a little weird at first,” Morales said. “After sparring as I was pulling into my garage, he’s like ‘what’s up Vince, how you doing?’ I was like ‘good, how are you … it’s weird you’re not right to the point.’
“He said ‘how’s your weight?’ I was like ‘weight’s always good, don’t worry about the weight, why what do you got?’ He said ‘how do you feel about Paris?’ I said ‘UFC?’ and he said ‘yeah’ and I told him shut up. I didn’t believe him at first.”
Morales confessed that the Facetime call was supposed to catch him either getting emotional or erupting with excitement that he was back in the UFC but neither of those things happened.
Instead, he immediately shifted his focus towards Lapilus and winning in his return to the UFC because that was suddenly all that mattered to him.
“I realized he Facetime’d me to get a reaction but I was locked and I was only thinking about the fight and the opponent,” Morales said. “I had to reach back in and pull some of the feelings for it because I’m not too focused on that until after I beat this dude up.
“That’s my primary goal right now. Great, I’m back. We can think about that later. I’m here now and I want to go fight this dude.”
A lot of attention is going to be paid to Morales coming back to the UFC but he’s not really getting lost in that too much ahead of his fight.
More than anything, Morales just wants to show that he’s a better fighter now than he was before so he prefers to think of this as a fresh start that just so happens to be in the biggest MMA promotion on the planet.
“I think a bunch of people want to focus on ‘Vince is back in the UFC’ and I’m not looking at like that,” Morales said. “I’m looking it like I’m here now. Mentally, physically, I’m just a much better MMA fighter now.
“I didn’t want to point fingers or anything on the losses or whether I thought I won, it was in my control to do better and I didn’t. So I focused on getting better and being better. I think that propelled me along with leadership from [my head coach] John Wood. He’s the man. He’s really helped me. We didn’t start over but we started with a new base line once we got cut and just realized where we needed to fix things and things have been fixed.”
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