For Chris Curtis, this weekend is do or die.

The veteran UFC middleweight takes on the 13-3 Russian Roman Kopylov at the UFC’s first event of 2025 this weekend at its Apex facility in Las Vegas as he looks to rebound from a split decision loss to Brendan Allen this past April and, as he told The Mac Life and other reporters on Wednesday, the stakes for this one are high.

“This fight’s important to me. I can’t lose two in a row. I can’t, like I really can’t. Especially after the last fight where I thought I had it. For my own mental wellbeing, it’s really hard to lose two in a row.”

Curtis has also made headlines recently due to his decade-long friendship with middleweight contender Sean Strickland, which recently appeared on the rocks. But as Curtis explained, there will be time to mend fences in future — for now, both have their plates full.

“[Strickland] is going out there to fight for a world title and get his belt back. We don’t have time to focus on shit that’s not conducive to the goal. One of my favourite sayings ever is ‘singularity of purpose’. Everything we have to do right now has to be with a sole purpose of achieving this next goal. We’ll get along fine, we’ll be fine for now. We’ll address it in the future. At the end of the day, I’m always going to be pulling for him and I want him to f*cking succeed. I want him to succeed in the cage, I want him to succeed in life — even if there are times where it’s like, ‘Bro I can’t f*cking stand you.”

“We’ll be fine, we’ll figure it out later.”