Alexander Hernandez: Back and Better
Alexander Hernandez Feels Revitalized Back At Lightweight For UFC 307
It’s official (or as official as anything in the fight game can be).
The Alexander Hernandez featherweight experiment is over.
“It is,” Hernandez laughs. And as he puts his 0-3 stint at 145 pounds to bed and returns to the lightweight division this Saturday against Austin Hubbard, he does sound a lot more pleasant.
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“I feel infinitely more pleasant now,” he said. “I figured if you're going to be walking a tight rope, might as well have some fun doing it and not be miserable the whole time. So that really has been the name of the game, trying to just find my mojo since that last one and just get back in love with the process and doing it and enjoying myself. A lot of what we're doing with this team has been that; just having a lot of fun in the process of it. It's been awesome.”
The last one was a three-round split decision loss to Damon Jackson in April. It was a fight where Hernandez missed weight, and it also marked his last with the Factory X team in Colorado. For this one, he’s still in the Rocky Mountain State, but now he’s training with a small squad that apparently changes its name weekly, depending on who you ask. Flyweight contender Brandon Royval likes the “Mile High Militia,” but this week, Hernandez has adopted “The Dropouts,” and he's sticking with it. But whatever you call them, the 32-year-old is at peace with his new teammates.
“It’s just a small crew, a lot of focus and bringing in the bodies that we need, which I really dig,” said Hernandez. “I wasn't really in the mood to go to another big thing.”
It’s almost like going back to San Antonio and grinding it out on the regional scene in search of that call from the UFC. These days, of course, Hernandez is 13 fights into a UFC career that began with a 42-second knockout of Beneil Dariush in 2018. But it never hurts to rediscover that fire that ignited this whole thing all those years ago.
“You get into it for a reason,” he said. “You got to have the creative spirit of it. You got to love the camaraderie of it and the learning. You get the physical and the mental challenge of it. It’s made it interesting again. I needed to walk away for a minute, come back in, start kind of finding the curiosity about it, start getting interested again, and then start being around people who can develop that curiosity and grow the interest and then you find yourself getting better again. And that's exciting. Once you start getting better again, you start having fun. Nobody likes to just be stuck in a stale, stagnant space.”
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It we’re going by results, Hernandez has been in that space for a while, as he’s just 1-4 in his last five. One of those losses was at 155 to Renato Moicano, and the other three were at featherweight to Jackson, Billy Quarantillo and Bill Algeo. The lone win in that stretch – a victory over Jim Miller at 155. Add that to his other UFC wins over the likes of Dariush, Mike Breeden, Chris Gruetzemacher, Francisco Trinaldo and Olivier Aubin-Mercier, it’s clear that he’s done his best work in the lightweight division, something he’s realizing now.
“I'm kind of looking at numbers, I'm looking at things, I'm like, okay, every best performance I've ever had has been at 155, of course. And generally, it's on a shorter notice call,” he said. “And so I feel like, yeah, the stars are aligned for a match like this. Stylistically, timeline, weight wise, I really dig it. So it's really exciting. And I'm just focused on this. I really think I could do a great job and have a lot of fun with it, and then I get out of the cage, I see how I feel, and then we assess the next thing.”
So there will be no speculation on his future past Saturday night. After that, we’ll all tune in, because if Hernandez has always been one thing, it’s honest. That can’t be easy in this day and age we live in. But he’s got a grip on it...so far.
“You’ve got to be honest with yourself,” he said. “But I think that there's a degree of delusion that takes you very far. (Laughs) Having a certain degree of awareness can be painful at times. And less than honesty, it's more just an overthinking brain. And sometimes that can be more of a detriment than anything. You need to have the right people say, ‘Shut that s**t off, it's not time for that. Pick your direction, go.’ And then you train that more than anything really. I don't think honesty is as much the fallacy as just overcomplicating and overthinking. But it would be nice to have a few more sprinkles of delusion. But, at the same time, I feel pretty comfortable with where I'm at with it. I really do. And I didn't fall into this fight by accident. I chose it. I like it and I'm very honestly aware that I am superior to this opponent. Let's just go show up on game night and make sure we deliver on that.”