{"id":913039,"date":"2026-10-02T04:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T04:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/913039\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T04:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T04:26:11","slug":"payton-talbott-reinvented-himself-ahead-of-ufc-332","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/913039\/","title":{"rendered":"Payton Talbott reinvented himself ahead of UFC 332"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 28-year-old has not competed since last December, when he scored the biggest win of his career<\/a> by defeating former two-division champion Henry Cejudo via unanimous decision.<\/p>\n

Instead of capitalizing on that momentum, Talbott was forced to sit on the sidelines for nearly one year. It wasn\u2019t for a lack of trying, either. Talbott wanted to compete and remained ready, but the phone call he was waiting for never came<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Talbott revealed this week that he was offered a showdown<\/a> with Sean O\u2019Malley for UFC\u2019s historic White House card in June, but the matchup never materialized.<\/p>\n

Rather than waste his unwanted time away, Talbott used the layoff to self-reflect, return to his roots and make some major changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of weird because this is still so new to me, but I just stayed training,\u201d Talbott told UFC.com. \u201cI stayed ready and trained pretty much the entire year, and I feel like I kind of reinvented myself. I went back to my roots \u2014 went inward.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou pick up all of these techniques as you develop in the sport,\u201d Talbott continued. \u201cYou go out of town and pick people\u2019s brains<\/a>. Sometimes you take things and implement them into your game, but sometimes the reason why you got where you are is because of you. So, you have to correctly learn how to implement it, not let it fully change you and use the best of what you\u2019ve learned.\u201d<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see exactly what Talbott\u2019s reinvention looks like because he has been nearly flawless inside the Octagon outside of his massive upset loss to<\/a> Raoni Barcelos.<\/p>\n

That defeat exposed some holes in Talbott\u2019s game, particularly against a relentless grappler. However, he already displayed significant improvements in his wrestling defense against Cejudo.<\/p>\n

Figueiredo now presents another stiff test and the perfect opponent to reveal how much Talbott has evolved during his extended absence.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the wait is almost over.<\/p>\n

To check out the latest and greatest UFC 332: \u201cSilva vs. Cong\u201d news and notes be sure to hit up our comprehensive event archive right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 28-year-old has not competed since last December, when he scored the biggest win of his career by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":913040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,446572,1396,179146,355513,1647],"class_list":["post-913039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-332","tag-ufc-news","tag-ufc-on-paramount","tag-ufc-mma-social-media-videos","tag-upcoming-ufc-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}