Athletes
Robert Valentin | Back From A Dark Place
TUF Finalist Opens Up About Battle With Depression Ahead Of Return To Action On Saturday
A couple months after coming up short in The Ultimate Fighter Season 32 middleweight finale, Robert Valentin could not find the motivation to get out of bed, let alone go to the gym and train.
The breakout star of the most recent season of the long-running reality TV series, the Team Grasso fighter carried the weight of the masses on his shoulders into his matchup with Ryan Loder and had no real answers opposite the former All-American wrestler. Post-match surgeries meant he couldn’t get straight back at it, and as the days on the sidelines turned to weeks, the engaging and charismatic Swiss talent started carrying around a secret that he could not bring himself to share with anyone.
“I’ve had losses in my career before and they’ve never sat heavy with me before; I’d lose a fight, and the next day, I’m in the gym like, ‘Let’s go!’” began Valentin, explaining why his loss to Loder impacted him so deeply just a few days prior to his return to action against Torrez Finney at the UFC APEX this weekend. “But you only get the chance to fight on the Ultimate Fighter finale once in your life — unless you’re Brad Katona — and this was something that I aspired to, was working for since I started MMA.
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“When I started training MMA, I was watching The Ultimate Fighter, and I was like, “Wow — I want to be there some day. I want to be the Ultimate Fighter.’ So getting there and having such a big impact on the show, I put all the hope of the fans on myself, and going to the finale, I was feeling like it was the best time in my life.
“I worked hard. I was in shape. I knew what I brought to the fight and what he was going to do. I knew what I had to do and being unable to do that, going back home after this fight — f***, I was depressed. I was really depressed.”
It wasn’t just the loss that sent Valentin into a dark place; it was the way he lost, combined with the added weight he’d heaped onto his shoulders after garnering a ton of positive feedback from people that watched the show and latched onto the dangerous finisher who took on a coaching and leadership role as part of Team Grasso.
And when the surgeries meant he couldn’t go back to the gym and train, Valentin got stuck in his head, stuck wrestling with his own thoughts, and spent the next several weeks losing a battle with his own mind.
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Thankfully, his close friends eventually recognized that something was off with their usually gregarious comrade, ultimately resulting in the group running a little “bait and switch” on the UFC hopeful.
“I had a lot of help from my friends,” started Valentin when asked how he worked his way through the depression, eventually getting to a point where he could resume his pursuit of success inside the Octagon. “Some of my really close friends, we have a ritual: once a week, we meet in our restaurant on Tuesday nights to talk, and I came there, and my friends were like, ‘Rob, what’s up with you? We can see in your face that you’re not where you’re supposed to be.’
“I tried to hide it from everyone because how I felt inside; I didn’t want everyone to know because everyone was excited for me because I still got signed. But, for me, I was big timedepressed.
“A week later, they set me up for a meeting,” he continued, smiling. “They were like ‘Hey Rob, we have to meet with this one guy; he has some issues and we need to help him.’ I was like, ‘All right.’
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“I walk in there and all my friends are sitting around the table, and they were like, ‘Okay Rob. Here’s your ticket — business class flight to Thailand, you leave tomorrow, and we want you out of here.’”
The meeting turned out to be a mini-intervention; Valentin was the guy they saw needed help.
“I was always saying, ‘I will go back,’ but I couldn’t get up. I felt so down, so my friends were just like, ‘Here! Get on the plane!’ I arrived in Thailand, I went to the gym, and I was like, ‘F*** yes!’
“I’m really grateful for my friends and how they saw through everything,” he added. “You know how it is sometimes where you’re kind of hoping they will see through it, but your pride won’t let you say anything. You would never come up to them and say, ‘Hey, I feel like s***!’ but it’s such a blessing if they come up to you and say, ‘I can see you’re not doing well; let me help you.’”
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A return to Thailand and the mats at BangTao helped “Robzilla” start to turn a corner, and eventually to him accepting the opportunity to welcome Finney to the Octagon for the first time this weekend in what is visually going to be one of the larger size disparities in recent memory.
While Valentin stands six-foot-two, brandishing a 77-inch reach, Finney is compact and muscular, standing five-foot-eight.
In theory, the six-inch height advantage should be a mark in the plus column for Valentin, but the thoughtful middleweight understands that these things can work both ways, and there are other things he needs to lean on in order to have success on Saturday night.
“It’s very hard,” he said with a smirk when asked about preparing for the stocky Finney, who enters with a perfect 10-0 mark after earning a pair of victories last season on Dana White’s Contender Series. “We’ve been sparring with a lot of short wrestlers. George (Hickman) would throw me in there with short wrestlers that are stocky.
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“What all these wrestlers forget when they fight me is that I’m very comfortable on the ground — I’m a grappler, mainly — but for this fight, we’ve prepared to not even let this be a grappling match,” continued Valentin, who is 11-4 with one no contest heading into his sophomore appearance under the UFC banner. “I think my advantages are the reach, obviously, but also my speed and durability. If you’re a short, muscular guy, you’re going to gas out a little bit quicker, and cardio has always been something that I value a lot and put a lot of work into, and we did for this camp.”
More than the measurables and the individual elements you can focus on specifically in camp, the biggest thing Valentin will lean on this weekend is a genuine love of being out there, under the lights, getting into a fight.
“I just need to be me,” he said, offering up his personal key to the fight. “I f***ing love to be in there, and, to be honest, this last fight, with all the pressure of the Ultimate Fighter finale and all this stuff, it kind of made me forget how much I love this.
“I was like, ‘I have to win because everybody expects me to win’ and this and that, so I kind of went into this place of (makes an angry face) and that’s not how I go out there.
“For me, I’m always a kid in a candy shop,” he added, smiling. “I’m not a guy that loves to train; I’m a guy that loves to fight, so the mindset for this one is to remember that the Robert from a couple years ago would have died to be in there, to have this opportunity, so enjoy it; this is your happy place.”
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After putting too much pressure on himself last August, faltering, and finding himself stuck in a dark place, the prospect of striding into the Octagon, fighting with joy and passion, and securing a win is something that Valentin cannot put into words.
“Man…,” he began, searching for a way to give voice to the emotions clearly coursing through his body as the thought of a UFC victory this weekend raced through his mind.
“I get shaky thinking about it. I cannot put it into words.”
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