He didn’t hide. Marcus Browne didn’t shut off family and friends. He didn’t chuck his cell phone into a river. He didn’t become a shut-in, or lock himself into his bedroom curled up in the fetal position on the floor for a week. That’s the first thing Browne will let anyone know when it comes to how he dealt with his first professional loss in the ring.

Instead, the 28-year-old southpaw light heavyweight from Carteret, New Jersey, faced it head on.

The night following his controversial, eight-round unanimous technical-decision loss to Jean Pascal, Browne went out to dinner with a friend. He wore sunglasses to shield the stitched-up left eye that was cut in the eighth round of the fight.

Friends and fans alike approached him, all saying the same thing, “You were robbed.”

Browne (23-1, 16 KOs) never cowered. He lifted his head up, looked everyone in the face and vowed he would be back.

It looks like he is.

“You have two ways to go with these things, either you run away and hide, or face them, and I’ve never ran away and hid from anything or anyone in my life,” Browne said. “My focus is on the next step and where I’m going.

“I didn’t lock myself in no house; I didn’t lock myself in no bedroom. I’m still calling Jean Pascal out, because I want to fight him. He didn’t win that fight. I think that’s what bothers me the most, the way he won. He smashed his head into mine.

“I’m not going through depression. I’m not running away from anyone. I’m annoyed at the fact that Pascal doesn’t want to fight me. I want to fight him, bro. I’d fight him tomorrow if I could.”

In the meantime, Browne is back in the gym. If it were up to him, he would have been pounding the bag and sparring days after the early-August setback in which he was knocked down in the fourth round of the fight and twice more in the seventh.

But, Browne notes, he still got up.

Browne said he was just getting started when the fight was stopped.

“Pascal never hurt me,” Browne said. “I’m back working. I had to spend some time for my eye to heal. I’ve always dealt with things head on, because it’s always the way I’ve dealt with things.”

The next night after the Pascal loss, Browne went out to dinner, and the following weekend, he went down with a group of friends to Miami.

But before he did any of that, Browne sat down and watched the fight again. He had to see it to believe it.

“ My priority is getting the Pascal fight. ”Light Heavyweight Contender – Marcus Browne

“I watched it the next day and I’m not going to lie, I made mistakes, he caught me, but I did get up and I was doing what I had to do,” Browne said. “Oh, I cursed at the TV more than a few times. I was angry at myself, for the mistakes that occurred, and for the way that fight ended. I wasn’t only yelling at Pascal for the way he fought, I was yelling at myself for doing things that I didn’t like.

“If I didn’t care, to be honest, I wouldn’t be angry over it. I saw things in that fight that I normally don’t do. I know there is talk about Pascal and Badou Jack, who I already beat. I’ll fight both Jack and Pascal and beat them in the same night.

“That’s how confident I feel.”

In the meantime, Browne said he’s filled his time being a father, taking his kids to school, helping them with their homework and working on sharpening his business acumen. He says he’s aiming for a fight early next year, possibly in January or February. He also notes he hasn’t changed much.

“It’s not about training harder, or longer,” Browne said. “It’s about training and being smarter in the ring. There were a few times, I’ll admit, I wasn’t smart against Pascal. What annoys me is that I know I should have been smarter.

“My priority is getting the Pascal fight. I’m doing the regular dad thing; educating myself on my business end of things.”

Keith Connolly, Browne’s astute manager, says Browne has recovered well from the cut. Connolly also stresses that Browne is so competitive that he was irritated and doesn’t feel like it was a loss.

In the end, however, expect a better Marcus Browne, Connolly promises.

“I expect Marcus to come back stronger from this, and he’ll be hungry as hell the next time he fights Pascal,” Connolly said. “It still bothers Marcus that he felt he was being head-butted, and it obviously caused the cut. That cut was certainly one of the worst I’ve ever seen.

“We may look at an interim fight before he fights Pascal. I would say the biggest lesson Marcus learned was patience. Marcus knows his power. He’s a talented kid, with speed and he’s a southpaw.

“Next year, we get a win under Marcus’ belt, we have a lot of possibilities ahead of us. Right now, we’re all being patient and Marcus still has a great career ahead of him. Marcus has learned from this and will move ahead.”

It’s what you would expect from a champion.

Article courtesy of PBC