UFC 321: Nathaniel Wood talks about how family and therapy help him overcome ‘waves’ of OCD

The first thing Nathaniel Wood mentioned when he sat down for his interview was his two daughters.

rafters when he reveals that Arla, one year old, and Laila, just over two months old, have joined him in Abu Dhabi.

The 32-year-old Londoner brought his family, including his wife, mother and father, to his fight against Jose Delgado at UFC 321.

For Wood, having his family with him is vital to getting into the right space before the fight because things have gone wrong before without them.

“If I’m not with them, I think about home. I look at my phone every two seconds and wonder what’s going on,” Wood told BBC Sport.

“Having them here means I can focus on the job at hand. I’m more relaxed.”

With his family close by, Wood feels at ease, smiling as he shakes hands before answering BBC Sport’s questions with conviction.

But it wasn’t always this way for him in Abu Dhabi.

The last time Wood was here, before his daughters were born in 2023, he was beaten by Mammad Naimov after struggling with his mental health.

Wood suffers from anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) – a mental health condition in which a person has obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors., external

“It comes in waves. Sometimes you can be completely fine, and then you can have what I call a ‘black cloud day’ where you feel anxious and obsess about things,” Wood says.

“Unfortunately, my time came the week of the fight. When I flew out, I had really bad anxiety.

“When I have OCD, it doesn’t allow me to move forward. So I didn’t care about fighting all week. I was just thinking about things I didn’t need to think about or obsess over.

“It’s so all-consuming. It’s like every second of that day you’re thinking about that thought, and nothing else. I could be talking to you right now and thinking about something else.”

Wood says “a number of factors” contributed to the defeat to Naimov, but he did not perform the way he wanted to due to his obsessive-compulsive disorder.