Athletes
Jordan Leavitt Loves The Uncertainty Of Fighting
Fighting For The First Time In Nearly Two Years, Jordan Leavitt Is Eager To Get Back Into The Octagon At UFC Fight Night: Blanchfield vs Barber
Of course, the most well-read member of the UFC roster, Jordan Leavitt, is going to throw in a Lemony Snicket reference when asked where he’s been for the last year-and-a-half.
“A series of unfortunate events, I guess,” Leavitt said. “Not all unfortunate. My youngest daughter was born, so then I was at home helping out with that, primarily, and then just bad luck. Fights fall through, injuries happened. But yeah, I've been ready this entire time. I’ve just been unlucky, I think.”
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Leavitt’s luck turns positive on Saturday, when he returns to the Octagon to face Kurt Holobaugh at the APEX. It’s a home game for the Las Vegan, who has read approximately 88 books since his last bout against Chase Hooper in November of 2023, and while you might think such a layoff would be crippling to a fighter on the rise, it wasn’t for Leavitt, and that’s not surprising that he made the time off work in his favor.
“This is the first time I've taken more than a year between fights, and I've never had to take off my fighter hat before,” he said. “But when you're injured and you don't have anything scheduled and fights fall through, you have to look at the mirror and see somebody different. I was always seeing Jordan the fighter, preparing for a fight, and for a year-and-a-half, I didn't get to be that dude. I always thought I was, and I'm okay with that. I've still been training, and I've still been getting better every day. I've been putting on muscle, I've been making improvements, but for the first time in my adult life, I've been something other than a fighter and it's kind of cool, and it's freeing to realize that there's more to me than just the jock.”
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To the outside world, Leavitt has always been more than a jock, but the only opinion that matters in situations like this is that of the man in the mirror. And while seeing this other side of himself has been nice, it’s also reinforced the feeling that at his core, he wants to fight.
“I've had a lot of time to completely rejuvenate myself and to refocus and to recenter,” he said. “My training environment is just head and shoulders above what it was before. My health is head and shoulders above what it was before, I've been working on so many things and, for the first time in a long time, I'm just excited to fight. I want to scrap as opposed to just wanting to compete and using fighting as a medium for self-improvement. I actually just want the fight, fight for the fight’s sake.”
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On Saturday, he gets his fight for fight’s sake. It’s his eighth UFC fight since coming off Dana White’s Contender Series in 2020, and while he’s experienced the usual highs and lows en route to a 4-3 Octagon slate, he’s still a promising prospect at 155 pounds, so it’s almost like he never left. But he did, so his feelings about returning are a lot different than if he came back a couple months after the Hooper fight. And that’s a good thing.
“I missed the uncertainty,” Leavitt said. “I always feel like for most things I've done in my life, it's like an endpoint equals output, but we're fighting. You can put all the inputs in and you're not guaranteed success. And that's exciting. And I'm just excited to go on this journey to have this cagefight, to engage and jump into this scramble, into this uncertainty, and see what comes out of it. It's a big gamble, but I really like my odds for this one. I do miss the paycheck (Laughs), but honestly, I can get a paycheck to do any of 1,001 things. I'm just happy that I get to do it in this particular unique way.”
UFC Fight Night: Gamrot vs Klein took place live from UFC APEX in Las Vegas, Nevada on May 31, 2025. See the final Prelim & Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC FIGHT PASS!
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