Modestas Bukauskas Is Taking More Risks

“I've been going up every week just for two days for Monday and Tuesday, and then I'll come back home and then finish the rest of my training back at home,” said Bukauskas of the training camp for his Saturday return against Marcin Prachnio. For the Lithuania native, it was necessary to not just get some different looks, but different looks from world-class fighters who actually dwarf the 6-foot-3, 205-pounder.

“I'm the smallest guy in the room,” laughs Bukauskas, who has been working with the likes of Aspinall, Ante Delija, Mick Parkin and Phil De Fries, all of whom clock in at 110kg (around 242 pounds) or more. “But I actually enjoy going up here. I've been up here with my dad, as well, and it’s a great vibe, great energy. It gels well with me and my dad and me and my training. And I get to test myself against heavyweights. Going against heavyweights makes light heavyweights and middleweights feel very light and it's good to go with different people in terms of sparring and get different looks. It’s definitely a great addition to the training and I'm very thankful. I feel like it was God's divine intervention to put these things in my path, which is amazing.”

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The 30-year-old sounds happy with his most recent camp, where he was thrown into the deep waters without a life jacket and forced to deal with not being the big fish in a small pond anymore. Now he was the “small guy” in the room, and it made him adjust not just physically, but mentally. And he loved it.

“I've been taking more risks,” Bukauskas said. “I definitely feel like when I go to spar guys my size or spar back home with my normal training partners, I definitely feel like I've developed my game to become a more well-rounded MMA athlete. And even seeing the way that the guys train up there, it makes me feel good about how I've approached the game, as well. I feel like there's many areas that I've improved upon, and I feel like the extended amount of time away from the cage was God's divine intervention again, because I wanted to fight around April. I'm glad I didn't because it's actually helped me to sort of evolve my game even more. And I've just been taking more risks, not only in training, but just in life, in general, but obviously in a positive way. I'm putting myself more in the firing line and I'm putting myself in positions where more mistakes are going to happen. But then when I'm putting myself in those positions, it means that as you slowly get better and better at those moves, you build your confidence. It's all a massive confidence thing.”

Bukauskas has always been confident, which makes the setbacks cut that much deeper. Yet after a three-fight losing streak in 2020-21, which was followed by over a year on the sidelines due to injury, “The Baltic Gladiator” always came back stronger and more confident. And the results have shown it. Remember, actions, not words. This time is no different, and as he comes back from the loss to Petrino, he is dead set on delivering his best performance to date in front of friends and family in his adopted home country.

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“Through the negative always comes the positive, which showed me a lot of the things that I needed to work on, a lot of the things that I needed to do, a lot of things that I needed to change,” he said. “It was a very dark time for me to handle that loss (to Petrino) mentally because it was just such an annoying loss. But I just had to get back to the drawing board and slowly in the new year, I got over all of that and I started seeing the progressions and seeing the things that I was improving upon. So the dark times of the loss and certain things not going so well after that fight just brought me into the good and the positive and the amazing things that have been happening. And I know that there’s going to be more to come.”