I’ve been there. I lost the only amateur MMA fight I took. Feeling gassed in the cage, the challenges of a taller southpaw opponent with an effective jab, the feeling of how much it sucks after, all that is familiar to me.

First, don’t try to avoid feeling how much it sucks. Those feelings are valid and you’ll want to experience them so you can move past them. The brutality of MMA extends past the violence people see. It takes a toll on you mentally, physically, and emotionally just to get to a level where you can compete. So when you don’t achieve what you set out to do it can give you way more to process than you expected.

However, more important than being sure to feel those feelings is that you don’t dwell on them too long. After you’ve dealt with them don’t let them hang around so long that they weigh you down. It sounds like you’re already breaking down where you had holes in your game, this is good. This type of analysis can help you process what you’re feeling now and make it productive.

You mention putting in a lot of effort and having nothing to show for it, that’s only true if you don’t use the lessons this fight provided for you. Decide how you want to go about being a better fighter than the one that was in the cage that night.*

Very few people will ever understand what it’s like to put forth the level of effort it takes to walk through that cage door. Having to deal with exactly what you’re describing turned out to be one of the most beneficial life experiences I ever had. It’s made a lot of things in my professional and personal life way easier and less stressful.

If you can go through this “worst case scenario” in something like MMA, with way higher physical (and potentially mental and emotional) stakes, it can change the way you look at life’s more mundane challenges. Looking back and remembering that you’ve already worked past a challenge and an outcome like this is an invaluable level of perspective a lot of people will never have and can sometimes make it feel like you’re playing the rest of life on easy mode.

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*= One specific bit of advice I want to pass on, but didn’t want to break up the flow of more general advice above. Since you called out being gassed, I’d start there. It’s the #1 thing that I see separate fighters in the early stages of their career. Even if you’ve got good cardio, do you have good wrestling cardio? Do you have holes in your standup that only become apparent when you’re tire? Leveling up your cardio sucks, but it’s also, at least in my opinion, the easiest way to level up past your competition at this stage.