UFC 186: Cote's evolution comes from defeat

When Patrick Cote stepped into the Octagon for his UFC debut, he didn’t think losing would be a positive course of action for his young fighting career.

He also didn’t think the most important lessons over the last decade would come from defeat.

It was 2004 and Cote was a rising Canadian star with a perfect 5-0 record as a light heavyweight when the opportunity of a lifetime arose. The face of the UFC and former light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz needed an opponent on short notice and the 24-year-old Cote was more than willing. He had dispatched his first five opponents in a total of seven rounds and was ready to take the step up in competition.

What he wasn’t ready for was the giant on the other side of the cage waiting for him in the main event at UFC 50. Cote lost by unanimous decision, which wasn’t so bad after all.

“Losing like that, with a good performance, even if I received 300 elbows in my face it doesn’t matter because at the end of the fight I was still on my feet and I made my name with this fight,” Cote, now 35, told TSN.ca. “So the best thing that happened to me, it’s kind of weird to say that, but the best thing that happened for me on that night was losing like that.

“If I won the fight, I’m not sure I’m in the UFC today because … if I beat Tito Ortiz, he was in the top three of former light heavyweights, after that they would give me (Vitor) Belfort, (Randy) Couture, (Chuck) Liddell, I wasn’t at their level at this time so that would have been a big mistake,” he added.

The loss was the catalyst for a new direction.

Cote would fight once more at light heavyweight, scoring a decision victory in Canadian organization TKO, before dropping down to middleweight. He dropped his first two bouts at 185 pounds and went 2-3 (0-3 UFC) from April 2005 to November 2006 before finding his footing in the new weight class.

A five-fight win streak (4-0 UFC), including Knockout of the Night wins over Kendall Grove and Drew McFedries, put Cote in line to fight Anderson Silva for the middleweight title.

The tumultuous ride continued for Cote when a freak knee injury brought the championship bout at UFC 90 to a crushing halt in November 2008. His championship dreams shattered for the moment, Cote was out of action for two years to let his surgically-repaired knee return to form.

But he wasn’t the same.

Two losses in five months after his return had Cote on the outside of the UFC and wondering if he would ever make it back.

“I knew that two fights ago I was fighting for the title against Anderson Silva and two fights after I was out of the UFC.” Cote said. “I took two months off, didn’t go to the gym at all and just thought about it and when I went back to the gym I said, ‘I’m going to know if I want to continue.’

“I put one foot into the gym and this thing came back into me and I said ‘OK, let’s try again and let’s try to go back to the big league.’”

He powered his way through four opponents outside of the UFC over the next two years, patiently biding his time until he could find an opening to return to the sport’s premier stage. This time he returned the same way he broke in with the organization in 2004.

Cote stepped in as an injury replacement for former middleweight champion Rich Franklin to face veteran Cung Le at UFC 148 in July 2012. 

“I was staying in shape the whole time because I knew that if I wanted to come back into the UFC it would be probably this kind of possibility, replace a guy who got injured and it happened,” he said.

In similar fashion to his UFC debut, Cote was the victim of a unanimous decision loss.

Cote fell short as a 205-pounder facing bigger light heavyweights. He found some success at 185 pounds before his body turned on him and the middleweight competition proved too tough. It was then that he decided to hook up with professional nutritionist Jean-Francois Gaudreau and take the journey even further down to the welterweights at 170 pounds.

The attention to the finer details has helped Cote evolve as a fighter. He returned to school and obtained a degree in sports nutrition; he has won two of his three fights at welterweight and says he has never felt this good in the Octagon. 

“It’s all about the knowledge,” he said. “I thought I knew something about nutrition but at the end of the day I did not know anything and I learned a lot in this process after my first fight in the UFC at 170 (pounds). I won the fight, I felt awesome and I went back to school in nutrition because I was so amazed about how the nutrition can change the level of your training and how you feel.”

Cote’s reinvention will reach another fork in the road when he faces Joe Riggs at UFC 186 at the Bell Centre in Montreal on April 25. He is coming off a decision loss to Stephen Thompson last September and a second consecutive defeat against a similarly-aging vet could spell the end of the former middleweight title contender.

It’s a possibility he recognizes but a reality he is not willing to accept. The reality for Cote right now is that he is more prepared than ever.

“Riggs is a very strong striker, heavy hands, very, very strong physically. He likes the ground and pound. He has a very violent ground and pound but at the same time he is very flat-footed,” he said. “The key to this fight for me is going to be a lot of movement, in and out, tag him a lot to get him frustrated and he’s going to make a mistake and give me an opening that I’m going to be able to capitalize on.

“We’re going to be ready for everything.”