Perfection is nice. In boxing, it’s near impossible.

There are the outliers, like Rocky Marciano, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Ricardo Lopez, Joe Calzaghe, Andre Ward and a handful of others. But, for the most part, if you compete in this sport long enough, you’re going to lose.

Daniel 'Chucky' Barrera didn’t have to like that reality, but he accepted that it might happen. When it did in February, as he lost a majority decision to Cristopher Rios, it didn’t send him into a dark place — only a hot one — as he shook off the defeat, got back to the gym in Arizona where it was 114 degrees last week, and went to work to prepare for his Saturday matchup with Basilio Franco.

It’s not easy on so many levels, but that’s the price that needs to be paid.

“I'm dying to go home and see my family,” said the 23-year-old from Eastvale, California. “But you got to do what you have to do in this sport.”

That means taking the good with the bad, building on the good and learning from the bad. Through Barrera’s first nine pro fights, it was pretty much all good after a draw in his second bout. He built a sizeable fan following, kept winning, and was seemingly on the fast track in the super flyweight division.

Then came February 21. That was bad. Not traumatic or career-altering bad, but the kind of result that readjusts his timetable a bit. But he’s taken it well.

“I knew the loss would come just because it's boxing,” Barrera said. “If you're trying to face the best in the sport in your division and trying to climb up the ladder, either it's going to be a close fight or it may not go your way, which I really don't mind. A loss is a loss. It doesn't define who you are. A lot of the world champions back in the day used to have four or five losses and they were still multiple-time world champions. So it is what it is. I definitely felt like I had a bad night. It wasn't my best performance by far, but congratulations to Rios. He gave me my first, so hopefully we can do it right this time, get the camp going and get it back again with him.”

That’s fighter talk, in the best way possible. Barrera wants his revenge with Rios, and not because there’s any bad blood involved. It’s just what fighters do. One pretty fair California fighter, Pomona’s Shane Mosley, told me when he was lightweight champion and seemingly unbeatable that he knew there was someone out there who would have his number.

He was right. Now it’s Barrera’s turn to deal with the reality that things are different now.

“A lot of the fighters think that they can't lose, and once you lose in this sport, the boxing fans kind of change on you,” he said. “They don't think as highly of you as they did when you were winning. But this is a sport. It is what it is. You just have to train hard, get your mind right, get into the right camp and just show to them that it wasn't a big deal and you still are on that road to become a world champion.”

That’s where Barrera sits today. Some fighters lose for the first time and you wonder how they’ll recover. Barrera isn’t one of those. He’s been fighting good competition in evenly matched bouts, and in that scenario, you won’t always get the W. But now that he’s got that bitter taste in his mouth, he’s doing everything in his power to ensure it doesn’t happen again on Saturday…or anytime soon. That’s not a physical thing. It’s a mindset thing.

“I feel like now the pressure's off because I am willing to take more risks now,” he said. “I think when you have that ‘0’ you don't want to take certain risks or you don't want to try certain things in there and it just makes you more of a cautious fighter. You fight to win, but you also fight not to lose. It makes sense with a lot of people that they come back stronger when they lose. It was kind of a blessing because of that. I'm very hard on myself with my performances. I like to do everything I can my best, and if I don't perform my best, I get on myself and I try to figure out why I'm not doing my best and then I work hard and get back to where I'm supposed to be. This fight, being that I took a loss, definitely made me hungrier, made me more focused, and more of a killer this camp.”

So will his fans be out in force at Chumash Casino with their Chucky dolls in honor the new killer Chucky in the ring?

“Yeah, they should,” he laughs. “Definitely.”