Rejuvenated Gray Maynard feeling like winner

Veteran UFC featherweight Gray Maynard had been asking himself a lot of questions during his past few training camps.

It turns out he found many of the answers simply by winning a fight.

The longtime Las Vegan had lost four straight fights and had become a bit of a nomad, moving to different training camps in search of the right formula that could get him back to the form that enabled him to rise to the top of the lightweight division, where he twice nearly became the champion.

Maynard finally got back in the win column with a unanimous decision over Fernando Bruno in July, and he immediately felt a difference when he returned to the gym after the victory.

“It’s different just because it puts out all the questions,” Maynard said. “When you have losses, you start going back and thinking about everything. It’s like, ‘Ah, I see what I did wrong here. I see where I went wrong there.’ You start applying all of that to your next camp, and you just have so many things to think about. When you start having good camps and positive outcomes, it starts to dismiss all the questions that were creeping in your mind about whether you’re doing the right thing or if you need to make changes.” Maynard vid

Maynard, 37, is back home in Las Vegas and training at his old camp, Xtreme Couture, in preparation for his fight against Ryan Hall on Saturday in the headliner of the preliminary card of “The Ultimate Fighter 24” Finale event at the Palms. He had spent time in San Jose, California, at American Kickboxing Academy and at Power MMA in Phoenix, along with brief stints at other gyms.

“This training camp has been great,” he said. “I was moving all over the place for a long time. It just wasn’t working out. Now I’m back here, and I had a really smooth training camp. It’s just a matter of applying it all to the cage now.

“It was a comfort zone again. You want to be in that comfort zone. You don’t see a lot of champs jumping around, because why would you do that when it’s working. It’s easy when you’re on that level to just jump right back into camp where you know the routine and that the pattern produces the desired outcome.”

Maynard hopes the stability will allow him to make another run at the UFC title that has eluded him.

He was undefeated when he dropped then-champion Frankie Edgar three times in the first round of a lightweight title bout in 2011 that eventually ended in a split draw. Maynard also had Edgar in trouble several times in the rematch that year before Edgar rallied for a knockout victory.

Maynard recovered to beat Clay Guida in his next fight, only to lose his next four fights and making the decision to drop to featherweight for the fight against Bruno.

Now, he hopes to make a run at the 145-pound title.

Maynard will have to take out Hall to make that a possibility. Hall is a largely one-dimensional fighter with outstanding grappling skills, but Maynard tries not to concern himself with whether his style matches up with his opponents.

“It’s not really about the matchup,” he said. “It’s just another step. I don’t really look at a certain opponent or style and think, ‘I can win against this or that.’ I’ve been with the UFC for 10 years. There’s no good or bad matchups. It’s just always about taking the next step.”

Maynard doesn’t think a championship run is out of the question.

“I feel like I’m always the top guy. That’s why I’m still doing it,” he said. “The title is always important. I got into this sport to be the best, to have the belt, to be at the top. I’m still doing this sport because of that. If I didn’t believe in that, I’d be out.

“It’s just a dream I really feel like I haven’t attained yet and I should have. It’s right there. I’ve just got to take it.”

Another win could put him on track in his new division. That could make the next training camp even more comfortable.

Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com or 702-277-8028. Follow @adamhilllvrj on Twitter.