Mental health battles have become a regular occurrence for Nathaniel Wood over the past two years, but the UFC star has been able to use overthinking to his advantage come fight night.
Wood, 29, has shown he is a dark horse at 145lb since moving up to the weight class earlier this year, winning back-to-back decisions against Charles Rosa and Charles Jourdain in his new division. 'The Prospect' cited a loss to Casey Kenney at the back end of 2020 as the moment his mental health started to deteriorate, but Wood has been able to turn a negative into a positive by using his internal struggles to his advantage during training.
The Brit told Mirror Fighting about his mental health battles: "The only reason I mentioned it was because I was using the anxiety and OCD to my advantage, because I think [Michael] Bisping asked me a question about how I prepared for Jourdain," he said. "When you suffer from anxiety and you have a fight coming up, I was just picturing Jourdain as being the best thing on the planet. I was thinking this guy is going to knock me out or submit it, so it meant the training was non-stop.
