Step one: end three-fight losing skid. Check.
Step three: battle Japanese superstar Caol Uno (Pictures) in a highly anticipated rematch. No check. Instead, meet a man in scrubs and a mask who's wielding a scalpel.
"I was feeling really good for the tournament, feeling strong," says Canadian lightweight Kultar Gill (Pictures), who had used his vacation time for the year to prepare. "I was training with Bibiano Fernandes (Pictures) and I took two to three months off work. I was hardly getting tapped out by anyone at the gym, including Bibiano. The Uno fight, I would have avenged my loss, but s--- happens, and it always happens to me."
Gill had woken one day during his preparation to find he had no strength in his left arm. He waited a week, then visited doctors and chiropractors but couldn't get his strength back.
"I couldn't even do one pushup," he says. "I had to have neck surgery done, which is all fine now, and I'm looking to be back in the ring in six months. Unfortunately for two months right now, I can't do anything since the surgery."
The injury knocked Gill out of the HERO'S lightweight tournament. He had advanced to the semifinals in July after stopping Hideo Tokoro (Pictures), whom he was hardly surprised to see lined up neatly next to him in the bracket.
"They threw me at Tokoro again because my last few fights have not gone really well," Gill says. "Because as soon as it hit the ground, I lost because my ground game wasn't at the level of people who train full time."
Having taken the losses in stride, the dynamic lightweight headed back to the gym to work over the weaker points of his game. He has since improved tenfold.
"Now with Bibiano on the Revolution Fight Team, all of our jiu-jitsu has gone through the roof, as you can tell with my last performance against Tokoro," Gill says. "They put me against him thinking I got lucky last time, and from the time that it went to the ground I showed everybody how much my jiu-jitsu and wrestling game has improved. I took his back -- the whole fight was on the ground. My standup has always been my bread and butter, but now my jiu-jitsu game has gotten a lot better, and next year I'm thinking about making a big splash in the K-1 HERO'S tournament again if I'm invited."
Fernandes has certainly made a big impact since moving out west. Gill had nothing but praise for his training partner, who in his K-1 HERO'S debut battled Norifumi "Kid" Yamamoto for three rounds before losing the decision to the Olympic-level wrestler.
"I think Bibiano showed what he's got off only two fights in his MMA career," Gill says. "He fought one of the best -- I guess a lot of people would say pound-for-pound best fighter in the world in Kid Yamamoto. Everybody thought he'd lose the fight in the first round, get knocked out or slammed on his head, but he showed that his wrestling was better, his jiu-jitsu was better and the fight was a really close one. Kid even after the fight came up to Bibiano and said he was the toughest fight of his career. All the credit to Bibiano. Next year he'll be a force to reckon with."
As for rankings and where Gill sees himself in comparison to the so-called elite lightweights in the world, the notion appears to be the absolute last thing on the British Columbian's mind.
"I'm just a fighter," he says. "If I win, you know, it's good. I just fight for fun and me ranking myself … you let people talk about you, not yourself. I just like to fight. I enjoy it -- it's something I do and something I am good at. I'll fight anybody, just for a challenge for myself. If I lose, whatever. If I win, whoopee-ding-dong, right?"
While nothing in the MMA world of contracts and politics is set in stone, there is one thing Gill remains certain of: He'll be back.
"I'll keep on fighting, and if I don't fight that's going to suck, but right now it's just heal up from the small surgery, and we're ready to rock again," he says. "K-1 has offered me a longer contract right now, but seeing I'm not fighting, it's up to my management team what route they want to take with me.
"I'll fight. It doesn't matter. I've fought for like 250 bucks before back in the day. It's up to my management team to decide whom I should fight, when or where. You know, I'm not a political guy. I'm a worker bee. I just work."