File this one under "obvious statement is obvious."

After three consecutive losses inside the Octagon, British striker Dan Hardy knows it's time to do whatever it takes to get back into the win column.

That's why he's finally coming around to a different approach towards the fight game because, after all, this is mixed martial arts, not kickboxing.

That means he needs well-rounded skills to survive in the talent stacked UFC welterweight division, a point driven home even further when he was "punked" by Anthony Johnson back in March.

"Rumble" promised a stand-up war with "The Outlaw" in the lead up to the event but instead opted for a grappling heavy attack that he used to cruise to a unanimous decision win.

Hardy learned his lesson from that fight, and all its hype, and will use that to his advantage for what could be his last shot inside the Octagon at UFC on Versus 5 on Aug. 14 against Chris Lytle.

"I can't expect anything from anybody anymore, I'm over trusting people," Hardy told the Winnipeg Free Press. "I learned that lesson in my last fight. Obviously, Chris Lytle isn't the kind of guy that would want to disappoint the fans and kind of hold somebody down for 15 minutes, I can't imagine the fight's going to be like that. But either way I've got to be prepared for it. Like people keep telling me, it's mixed martial arts not kickboxing and I need to be a wrestler as well as a striker. I'm going to work on everything, regardless. The reality is I've been in this sport a long time and I've stopped a lot of takedowns and I've taken a lot of people down. It just so happens that the two fights that I did lose were to good wrestlers and they were on national TV. I've been training wrestling and jiu-jitsu since I got into the sport. It's just something that's not always been available to me. It's something that I've made an effort to seek out and now I've really got to switch my focus and put some more time into it."

After stringing together four straight wins inside the Octagon, Hardy was upended by division champion Georges St. Pierre in their UFC 111 title fight just over a year ago.

A surprise knockout loss to Carlos Condit would follow at UFC 120 last October and Johnson continued the downward spiral by taking the slugger down and controlling him for the better part of three rounds.

Hardy knows what he needs to do in order to get himself back into the win column, or to at least keep the fans entertained enough to warrant him sticking around. He needs a gamer who isn't afraid to stand and trade or just flat-out brawl for fifteen minutes straight no matter what the cost.

Paging Mr. Lytle...

But Hardy knows he can't rely on his opponent to play into his hand, no matter what his track record is and no matter what kind of pre-fight promises he makes.

But does the Nottingham knuckler, who recently moved out to Las Vegas to train full time with Roy Nelson, have what it takes to turn his career around? And will he be able to match wrestling and jiu-jitsu with Lytle, a longtime veteran with almost as many submission wins as Hardy has wins altogether?

We shall see.