LAS VEGAS – Thomas Petersen met the media Saturday after his win over Guilherme Pat at UFC Fight Night 272.

Petersen (11-4 MMA, 3-3 UFC) took a majority decision from Pat (6-1 MMA, 1-1 UFC) to close out the prelims at the Meta APEX in Las Vegas. To say the American was emotional after his win over the Brazilian is an understatement.

The victory gave him a rebound from a brutal knockout loss in Brazil that got Vitor Petrino a bonus this past October – and sent Petersen to the proverbial shadow realm.

“I lost my last fight in the worst way possible and I woke up in an ambulance in motherf*cking Brazil, a million miles away from my wife,” Petersen said while choking back tears at his post-fight news conference. “When that kind of sh*t happens to you in this sport, you don’t want to do it again.

“But this is what I love to do, and I was willing to put it on the line and it worked out for me.”

Petersen, who has a day job as a mechanic servicing concrete mix trucks in Minnesota (shout out, AVR Concrete!), said he’d been having some doubts in the UFC. The 31-year-old former LFA heavyweight champion has alternated wins and losses so far throughout his UFC tenure.

But getting back on the right side of things against Pat, particularly after the way he lost to Petrino, appears to be a massive confidence boost for Petersen.

“I still belong here, is what that win brought me,” Petersen said. “… This fight was if I belong here or not. That’s how I felt. I showed I still belong here, and I just want to keep going.”

Check out Petersen’s post-fight interview in the video above.

This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Emotional Thomas Petersen gets concrete evidence he belongs in UFC