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Emotional Crute pumped to be back | 01:58
Kneeling in the middle of the Octagon, leaving his gloves on the canvas in front of him, Jimmy Crute was defeated and dejected.
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“Done”, as he later told foxsports.com.au, reflecting on the four simple words from his father Gary that saved the 28-year-old, who in 2020 was rated ESPN’s top fighter under 25, from a premature retirement.
Gary told his son that it was fine if he was done. It was his choice, and no one else’s, if he wanted to hang them up.
But “not like this mate”, Gary added.
“And it’s lucky for me it was my old man there,” Crute said in November last year.
“Because if it had been anyone else, I probably would’ve started swinging on them.“But dad, he knows me well. He’s always been that person in my life I listen to.“So it’s lucky he was there.”
And now Crute is here. Back at UFC media day, back “with a whole different mindset” when it comes to the way he approaches the week.
It follows more than a year away from the promotion, which Crute spent travelling in his van and training with the likes of Alexander Volkanovski and Robert Whittaker.
On that road of self-discovery, Crute found his love, not just for the sport, but for life. He found God and, most importantly, he found himself.
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And now, as Crute prepares to face Rodolfo Bellato in his first fight since that UFC 290 loss to Alonzo Menified, he wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.
“It feels like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be,” Crute told Main Event’s Niko Pajarillo on Wednesday.
Although this isn’t necessarily where other people expected Crute to be at this point in his UFC career, having risen up the ranks in the light heavyweight division after opening with a 4-1 record. All four of those victories came with finishes too.
Crute had exploded onto the scene with a first-round stoppage win over Chris Birchler in Dana White’s Contenders Series before a string of fast finishes saw the 205-pound Australian rewarded with a sudden shot at No. 6 ranked light heavyweight contender Anthony Smith.
Crute lost that fight and was then knocked out by Jamahal Hill, before suffering another defeat to Alonzo Menifield in between the pair’s three-round draw at UFC 284.
It left the 28-year-old at a crossroads and, after the loss to Menifield during last year’s International Fight Week card in Las Vegas, feeling “f***ing exhausted”.
“It’s kind of hard to sum up because so many things have happened and there have been so many moving parts,” Crute said, reflecting on the man he once was and the one he is now. “It’s been a journey back to this position. So, it’s been a wild one.”
“Everything used to feel like a struggle,” Crute added, explaining that used to “always” be “tired and sleepy”.
“I was just f***ing exhausted,” he flatly put it.
“Everything was so laboured. But now I’m just happy to be alive. Just happy to experience everything and I’ve got Jesus Christ to thank for that.”
So, how exactly did that happen? How did Crute, who by his own admission was “never” previously in touch with his faith, find his purpose in God?
Well, it started when he “hit rock bottom”.
“I just prayed to God,” Crute said, “and I was like, ‘Make me a better man’.
“… And it wasn’t a straight-forward thing. It was a journey that God took me on to bring me back.
“It feels like he brought me back to myself, and just let me shed all this s*** that I was carrying that I didn’t need anymore.”
Such as?
“It was all mental,” explained Crute, who said he was “holding onto sh** that doesn’t serve me”.
“Holding on to all this made-up story in my head. Holding on to all this f***ing negative emotion stored within my body.”
All the self-doubt, the low self-esteem, the obsession with being a perfectionist.
“I just let it all go,” Crute said.
And he’s not sharing his story or his experiences because he wants sympathy. In fact, that is the last thing Crute wants.
“I will talk about it, but I will only talk about it because I think it can help other people,” he said.
“I don’t need no f***ing sympathy. I really don’t.”
But he does need people to remember not to judge others.
“Because you never know what someone’s going through,” Crute said.
This coming from a mullet-wearing fighter who described himself as “the biggest bogan I’ve ever met” back in 2021.
But as Crute put it so perfectly on Wednesday afternoon: “You never know what mask someone’s putting on to hide the way they really feel”.
Jimmy Crute has a new lease in life. (Photo by Louis Grasse/PxImages/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)Source: Getty ImagesAnd now? Crute is still sporting a freshly cut mullet, but this time around there is no mask. Crute took it off when he decided to lay his gloves out on the canvas after the loss to Menifield.
At that moment, he wanted to walk away from it all; from the “pressure cooker”. With time, Crute realised he wasn’t done.
“Far from (done),” he added.
At 28 years old and with his long list of injuries behind him, Crute still feels like his best work in the octagon is ahead of him.
“When do light heavyweights hit their prime? Like 31, 33. I’m still 28 years old,” he said.
“And that’s what people forget, because I’ve been around for a while. But I got into this pretty young.”
Which meant high expectations when success came early. But now Crute has balance in his life. He has balance in his training. He is “seeing the game more clearly”.
“There’s not a layer of fog in my brain,” he added.
“I just plugged some holes, but they were pretty glaring at one point in time.”
The path back to the top starts on Sunday against Bellato, a fighter who Crute described as “well-rounded” and, well, “big”.
“He’s a powerful dude,” Crute added.
“They call him the tractor and he sort of fights like a tractor.”
But more than anything, Crute is focused on himself. He is focused on his game, on this new chapter in his career and on his definition of success.
“So, I’m just getting myself ready for war,” Crute said.
“And I feel like I’m going to be too much for him.”
Because after more than a year away from the sport, Crute also found something else. He found some tricks up his sleeve, and Bellato is “not going to see (them) coming”.
