Nick Klein: "I Belong Here"

But when a fighter hears that Octagon door shut, it’s a fight, and there’s no backing out now. SoKlein went to work and did well, but after a solid five minutes, things had changed.

“I remember the first round ending and I really wasn't that tired cardiovascular wise, but, for whatever reason, my muscles weren't responding very well,” he said. “I knew I won the first round and I knew I hurt him bad, but I knew in the second round I wasn't going to be able to fight him the way that I did in the first, and it was just poor IQ and poor choices that led to me not winning that fight.”

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If there are any worse feelings in the world of sport, I don’t know what they are. But again, fighters are made of different stuff than the civilian population, so Klein was going to leave his corner for the second round and either figure it out or go down swinging.

“I knew that I didn't have a whole lot of horsepower left, and I could tell that he hadn't quite detonated his bomb yet,” said Klein. “And in the back of my head, I kind of was like, ‘F**k, man, at some point he's going to tee off here.’ And I think I just froze up under all the lights and on that platform and just that whole experience; it almost felt like a dream. I couldn't actually believe I was there. And I think after coming away from that fight, reality set in and it was like, dude, I was beating that f**king guy. I was winning and I hurt him. And obviously, I'm not hanging my hat off of a loss or anything, but like I said before, as disappointing as the outcome was, there were positives to take from it. And I really just want to focus on the things that I can improve to get a win this time.”

And for a union laborer nicknamed “Blue Collar,” the next stop was the gym to work on the holes in his game and raise the level on the parts of his attack that led him to six wins and five finishes since turning pro in 2021. Yeah, he hasn’t been here for a long time, but he’s moving fast. And to keep that momentum going, he supplemented his training at home with Pura Vida BJJ & MMA in Milwaukee with a week in Las Vegas and the Xtreme Couture squad. That meant some work with former middleweight champion Sean Strickland in the worst of situations. Want to have your heart certified, this is your shot, and Klein, who already passed that test, got some extra credit for his time in Vegas.

“I think a lot of it's attributed to sparring with a lot of different people and having to spar people when you're tired,” said Klein. “Going through endless shark bait rounds and stuff like that, when you get a new guy every minute or a new guy every two minutes, I've seen the worst side of having to fight when you're tired, so it doesn't really matter who it is anymore. I went out and trained at Xtreme Couture for a week, and I remember Sean Strickland was my fifth round of five rounds.”

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We both laugh, knowing what came next, which was perhaps the biggest lesson of all for a man who gets in fistfights for a living.

“I was dog tired,” Klein continues. “And he beat the s**t out of me. He didn't knock me unconscious or anything; I was able to clinch up with him and get a little breath here and there, but in the long and short end of it, he beat the f**king s**t out of me. And obviously I'm not happy or proud of that by any means, but I came away from that round thinking that's as worseas it could possibly get right there. And so I really think it's just an experience thing. The more time you have fighting tired and fighting good fighters while you're tired, you just take it for what it is. Yeah, I'm tired, but I'm going to go fight anyway. It doesn't matter. F**k being tired, let's just go fight this guy.”