Tony Ferguson hinted at retirement after losing his eighth consecutive fight in a row in what is almost assuredly his final appearance in the UFC.

Just moments later backstage, the former interim lightweight champion seemingly walked back those comments while stating that he knows fans would follow him wherever he competes next while promising that he’s only going to “get better and better and better and better” moving forward. Recently retired UFC welterweight Matt Brown understands the difficulties that Ferguson is facing with the possible end of his career because it’s a common theme among fighters at that level of the sport.

While he was resolved in the decision he made just a few months ago, Brown sympathizes with Ferguson’s struggles to put fighting behind him and move onto something else.

“Look, when you lose eight in a row, it doesn’t matter where you’re at in your career — that’s pretty much OK, you should probably call it quits,” Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “Something isn’t right. Whatever it is. If you lost your first eight or you lost your last eight.

“The problem is he had so many wins, he was interim champion, on like a 12-fight winning streak back in the day. So he’s like a cocaine addict trying to reach that high again. When you get eight [losses], it doesn’t matter. If he had lost eight fights in a row at the beginning of his career, his first eight fights, he would have quit most likely. He would have been like ‘well this definitely isn’t the sport for me, I lost eight fights in a row.’ But because he’s already had that high, he’s thinking I can get back to that.”

In many ways, Brown equates the elation felt from winning in the UFC to the euphoria that a drug addict might find while getting high. But much like doing drugs, Brown knows that feeling is only temporary and so fighters are constantly chasing that rush whenever they set foot in the octagon.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that nothing can equal the charge that comes from winning in the UFC so almost every fighter struggles to let that go for good.

“It’s like cocaine. It really is,” Brown said. “That’s what walking into an octagon and beating another man’s ass [feels like], especially the way Tony did where he just f*cking ripped people’s souls out of their bodies. That is a high you cannot get anywhere else, in any other way.

“But you can’t chase that. You’ve got to accept that was the season of your life, and it’s time to move onto a new season.”