White confident Brown will be back

UFC president Dana White is confident former WEC featherweight champion Mike Brown will be bale to bounce back from his loss to Manny Gamburyan at WEC 48.

White has revealed that Brown was struggling with personal problems ahead of the fight.

“I was worried that this would come up,” White said after WEC 48. “Before the fight started – and I don’t want to take anything away from Manny Gamburyan and his win – before the fight started, Jake Shields said to me, ‘He’s going to lose tonight.’”

“I said, ‘Why do you think that?’” White recounted. “[Shields] goes, ‘He had a horrible camp. His girlfriend broke up with him. He skipped camp for 14 days and all kinds of crazy [expletive].’ Jake Shields said that to me before the fight, and so did (trainer) Mark DellaGrotte.”

“I think he’ll be back,” White said. “He’s a great fighter – talented guy. I always say the thing that I respect most about fighters in any fight business is you don’t go in as a team and play and say, ‘Oh, we lost tonight. That’s OK. We still have [expletive] 113 games this season. We’ll make it up.’

“When you’re a fighter, every time you play, it counts. You have to be mentally strong and prepared all the time. It’s tough. He’ll be back. I think he’ll be back, and he’ll still be a force.

“He just has to get his head together and get his personal life together.”