Finally, Mike Swick was going to take a vacation. After being in the American Kickboxing Academy Gym non-stop for most of 2009, the welterweight contender was just waiting on his visa to come in so he could go to Brazil, relax, do some training and basically unwind from a year that saw him hit the highs and lows of his profession – a KO win over Ben Saunders in June and a decision loss to Dan Hardy in November.

Then manager / trainer Bob Cook called. AKA teammate Josh Koscheck was injured and probably not going to make his UFC 109 date with Paulo Thiago. Would Swick step in?

Well, you know the answer to that one, and the ‘yes’ Swick gave Cook epitomizes who the Houston native is as a fighter, simply because he’s willing to put it all on the line, on short notice, against an opponent who – as a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt - may be a stylistic nightmare for him. But that’s just part of the fun.

“It’s a rush to get in shape and get to where I need to be for this fight,” he said. “And I’m doing everything I can to the brink of breaking my body down. Submission defense and ground positioning is a high priority, but also striking, because that’s where I feel I can win the fight and finish the fight.”

The ground question is the big one though. Despite Thiago’s knockout of Koscheck a year ago, the Brazilian’s home is on the mat, and Swick has yet to face a grappler of his caliber in 17 pro fights. At any level that’s dangerous; at the elite level, where two losses in a row can cripple a fighter’s title hopes, the stakes get even higher.

“This is the best ground guy I’ve ever faced in my entire MMA career and I like that, it’s a challenge,” said Swick. “I love fighting opponents where I know I can get beat and I have to go out there and do what I need to do to win. It’s so much more exciting and challenging than fighting opponents I should beat everywhere. I know that Paulo Thiago is extremely dangerous on the ground, and if I play his game and make a mistake, he’s gonna choke me out, and I know that. So I gotta play my game, whether it’s on the ground or on the feet, and that creates a challenge that I like. It’s the reason why I do this. I’m not in it for the payday, I’m not in it for the easy fights; I’m in it to challenge myself and to take on the best competition, and this is exactly one of those fights. I have the tools to win, but I have to go out there and not make any mistakes and fight a perfect fight. If everything works out, you feel really good about it. You know you went out there and did something good.”

To help reach that level of perfection when the bell rings at the Mandalay Bay Events Center this Saturday night, Swick has been working overtime – not just to get in fighting shape, but to break down every aspect of Thiago’s game. Luckily, he’s been able to pick the brains of two teammates who have shared the Octagon with him in Koscheck and Jon Fitch. Fitch, who went three rounds with Thiago en route to a unanimous decision win at UFC 100 last July, has been particularly helpful, considering that he spent 15 minutes – mostly on the mat – with him.

“Having someone like him (Fitch), who not only fought Paulo Thiago, but fought him at his own game and beat him at his own game, it’s very beneficial because he’s telling me how he moves, how his transitioning is, how his hips feel, his strength, things you can’t see on tape,” said Swick. “Then we’re also studying tape of his recent fight (a win over Jacob Volkmann) and things that he goes for. It seems he really likes the choke, so we’ve been working on a lot of choke defense because the last thing I want to do is wake up and have Bob Cook screaming at me that I lost (Laughs), so I definitely want to do my choke defenses. We’re doing our homework on this one and I’m doing everything I can to go out there and get a win.”

Swick sounds not only confident, but at ease, maybe the most relaxed he’s been before a big fight in a while, and in stark contrast to his pre-fight demeanor before other bouts, where you could hear the edge in his voice. It’s not what you would expect from a fighter following a high-profile defeat, but Swick is choosing not to dwell on his decision loss to Hardy at UFC 105.

“I’m not gonna make any excuses for that fight and you’re never gonna hear me complain about this or that,” he said. “The bottom line is that we both went out there and I lost. You have those times where things just don’t work out, and he had a great fight. He went out there and did exactly what he needed to do.”

The decision loss to the man challenging for George St-Pierre’s UFC welterweight crown in March wasn’t the most devastating (that award goes to his 2004 KO loss to Chris Leben) or the most dominant (that would be his 2007 decision defeat to Yushin Okami), but regardless of the circumstances, a loss is a loss, and in a talent-rich weight class, all it takes is one setback to force a fighter back to the drawing board. It’s that journey that Swick has learned to embrace, simply because it shows that he is able to dust himself off and get back in the race for a marathon, not just a sprint.

“The thing about it is, I wouldn’t want a perfect career,” he said. “The way things are going, I don’t like losing and I don’t like sitting on a loss, don’t get me wrong, but looking at my career, some of my most defining points have been from losses. Every loss I’ve ever had, I’ve created a four or five fight win streak. They’ve had a great impact on my career, and in the eyes of the fans and the people who follow and care about me, it shows a lot when they see you get beat and then you come back strong and show them that everybody loses, everybody stumbles, and everybody has a bad day. It’s how you act afterwards that’s admirable and I got a lot of respect from a lot of my fans for that and it’s something that I strive to keep doing. I want to show that if you do lose or come up short, you just don’t give up. Don’t doubt yourself, just come back strong and keep building on your career. And if you become a champion one day, it’s gonna feel so much better that you’ve had so many hurdles.”

“Until you have a loss, you can’t really define who you are,” Swick continues. “It’s easy when you win all the time. The hard part is when your hand doesn’t get raised after a fight. You have to go home and live with that for several months and feel the impact of that. Then you have to suck it up, get back in the gym, and tell yourself it’s not happening again and go out there and win.”

On Saturday night, Swick gets his chance to put the memory of the Hardy defeat away and start another winning streak. It’s almost like a new beginning for him, making it clear why he’s so positive and relaxed in the lead-up to the fight, because everyone would love a clean slate, right?

“I want to make a big statement and I want to come back strong,” he said. “I feel like my last performance wasn’t a good one and the only way you can right that wrong is to come back and have a better one. I’ve been given this opportunity to come back and face a very tough, respectable fighter, and so I’m gonna use it to show the world that I am a top contender and that I am better than I showed in the last fight.”