with MMA Fighting,<\/a> Ferguson credited the change from UFC to Misfits and MMA to boxing for his turnaround.<\/p>\n\u201cOne coach would always tell me, \u2018Make sure you water plants, Tony,\u2019\u201d Ferguson said. \u201cAnd it brought me back to how I used to be: always f–kin\u2019 gardening. But sometimes you get so busy, you forget. And sometimes you don\u2019t add enough nutrients and you don\u2019t have enough sunlight, sometimes you have to move that s–t. You have to move yourself. Move it to a different area.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are getting enough sun, and we are doing enough things and nutrients, but it doesn\u2019t happen overnight. You expect it to happen overnight, but when you don\u2019t realize it and you\u2019re not paying attention to it and you keep with the routine, somebody else will notice it, and they notice the hard work that went into it because that becomes your routine.\u201d<\/p>\n
It hasn\u2019t been easy to stay this positive. Even his Ultimate Fighter coach Brock Lesnar suggested he hang up the gloves during his five year losing streak.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a conversation with Coach Brock,\u201d Ferguson recalled. \u201cI forget what loss it was or whatever fight it was \u2026 he was like, \u2018You should think about retiring, Tony.\u2019 Can\u2019t f–king listen to anybody. F–k no!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would I listen to anybody that\u2019s not in my shoes?\u201d he asked. \u201cYou\u2019re not here. You don\u2019t know what the f–k it takes to be here. You might have your f–king opinion, but you don\u2019t f–king stay here through the bulls–t with me. Nobody f–king does. Through the ice baths, through the f–king saunas, through the f–king running, the late night bodies. Nobody fucking does that s–t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you guys that critique me or f–king any other person that\u2019s coming out here doing this shit, f–k you.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not exactly how he responded to Lesnar at the time, though.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked Coach Brock, \u2018Coach, what do guys like us do when we retire?\u2019 I value his opinion, and he says, \u2018Find your second passion and follow that with everything you\u2019ve got like you did your first.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Ferguson still sees boxing as an extension of his first passion, which is sports. But someday, probably years and years from now, he\u2019s going to take Lesnar\u2019s advice and become a coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m gonna be a f–king college wrestling coach one day,\u201d Ferguson said. \u201cThis is my retirement. Like, wrestling is my life. I love this. If I wasn\u2019t doing all this fighting and competing and stuff, yeah, would coach more \u2026 Because I was fortunate enough to have somebody do that for me, and I remember somebody was cool enough to be able to tell me to pay it forward. So if I\u2019m able to do that kind of thing, they\u2019ll be able to go and do that to somebody else someday.\u201d<\/p>\n
For now, though, Ferguson is focused on defending his Misfits belt at Misfits Mania: The Fight Before Christmas<\/a> on December 20th. And then? More fights, and more wins.<\/p>\n\u201cI know you guys are gonna be awesome this year,\u201d Ferguson declared. \u201cSo am I. 2026, I\u2019m coming at you harder than a right hook.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At 41 years old, Tony Ferguson is feeling like a new man \u2026 and all it took was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[36109,49,48,641,33601,638,82],"class_list":["post-351359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-boxing-news-results","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}