The Best Version Of Vince Morales

Yes, at 34, Morales is the adult in the room.

“I want to be a good representation of the sport,” he said. “For instance, when I was fighting on some of these regional shows when I first got released from UFC, I see the way some of the athletic commissions look at some of the up-and-coming guys and it almost feels like they think less of us. So I try to make sure that I'm a professional and I put forward a good image that represents all of us. There's some bad ones out there, but we're not that bad. I think we deserve just as much respect as their co-workers and sometimes it seems like they condescend and speak down to us a little bit.”

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It's frustrating for any athlete to be going through that, especially more than 30 years since the days when mixed martial arts was a niche and outlaw sport. But you wonder how someone like Morales can be thrown in with the “barroom brawler” crowd when he is one of the most professional fighters on the roster. But he tries not to spend too much time on such matters. There’s real business to tend to, and after nearly two years outside the UFC, he was ready to take care of that business against Lapilus. 

“There was a little bit of frustration, without trying to make excuses for myself,” he said when asked what went wrong that night in the Accor Arena. “I try to make sure I'm doing things better the next time and I think I can do things better with full camps. I was looking at all of my UFC fights and the majority of them - I think all but one - are short notice fights. And I think as much as I'm down for short notice, I'm not doing myself any favors by jumping on short notice opportunities. So I told myself, okay, let's get full camps, let's do things right. This is the second go. I'm going to make sure that all my chips are in and if I got to leave bits and pieces of me out there in the cage, I'm doing that. And that's best with a full camp.”

Morales got what he was looking for his fight against Smith, and he’s eager to test the 22-year-old Dana White’s Contender Series graduate, especially since, in his mind, he’s still the one who was running through people in between UFC stints. In other words, his confidence wasn’t dented in the slightest by the loss to Lapilus. 

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“You know what's weird?” Morales asks. “I'm still right there. For whatever reason, that fight didn't deter me. Somewhere in my mind, I'm like, it's not that I really lost, I just ran out of time. I heard that somewhere and I'm running with that for this one. (Laughs) I still feel like the best version of myself that I've been and I'm looking forward to showing that.”

Hearing that, I wonder if maybe Morales would have been a good fit in the “two men enter, one man leaves” era. 

“Oh, a hundred percent,” he said. “Well, I was three years old then (laughs), but if I was me now back then, hell yeah. I'm all about it. I've dreamed of tournaments where I'm fighting multiple fights in the same night. I'm from a wrestling background and that's what we did. My mind just feels good there. I like to build a little bit of momentum and keep it going in a single night. And then I feel like those victories are just that much bigger.”

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There are big victories to secure for Morales without them all being on the same night, and while he’s scored notable UFC wins over Aiemann Zahabi, Drako Rodriguez and Louis Smolka, and finished UFC vets Teruto Ishihara and Hunter Azure before his return, the biggest victory is the next one, and he plans on starting what he hopes will be a busy and lucrative  2025 by getting his hand raised at the APEX this weekend.

“Three fights, three wins,” Morales said. “I'm trying to make a quarter million dollars, so that means I'm bonus hunting every single fight.”