Issue 192

September 2020

The UFC fighter on making her dreams come true – in an empty auditorium.

You are coming off a big win in the main event at UFC on ESPN 10 versus Jessica Eye. Now that you have had some time to reflect, what are your takeaways from the fight?

I just took advantage of a really good opportunity. I did great as far as the amount of time I had to prepare for the fight and the fact that it was a five-round fight. I knew that going against Jessica, that she doesn’t really finish anybody. She generally slides through with close decisions. Ultimately, what I took away is that it was a good opportunity. It wasn’t the best Jessica Eye but it wasn’t the best Cynthia Calvillo, either. It was a great fight and I am super thankful for the opportunity and how well I did with it.

What were your thoughts when she came in heavy at the weigh-in?

It did not surprise me. She had already missed weight in her last fight in December. Being such a short notice fight, I don’t think she was expecting to fight that soon. Something just told me that she was going to have a tough weight cut and maybe even miss weight. It was crazy how it all happened. It is what it is though. 

It was a big spot for you. It was the main event. You are the big face on the posters. You were the last fighters to walk out to the Octagon. That being said, there weren’t any fans. How did you deal with that unique situation?

You know what? I kind of liked it. It was a smaller cage. I think that not having any fans there allowed me to focus more. It’s not that I don’t go into like a tunnel vision, but it’s a way different feel. You can’t deny the energy of a big, old, huge crowd. I think not having the crowd helped take off the pressure during the fight. In this fight I could kind of hear everything. It was just a different atmosphere but I liked it. 

In that intimate environment, were there times when you knew you were getting the better of her?

It felt like just another training day, really. I think going up a weight class made it feel that way, too. Even in between rounds four and five, I just stood up. I didn’t even sit down on the stool. I was way more competitive and focused on this. I was happy with the energy I took into the fourth and fifth rounds. During the fifth round I found it. I already knew I had the upper hand in the grappling. I think I was having a hard time finding my distance in the standup early on. I was getting tagged up by her, which was her main thing. She wasn’t moving the same way later though. She was a lot more defensive. After wearing her down after a couple of rounds, once the fifth round came I could just stand there and out-box and definitely out-grapple her. Those were the big moments in there, which were really awesome to experience, with it being my first five-round fight. 

You posted that image on social media of you jumping up in the air as the decision was read. What was going through your head at that moment?

I was really excited because Jessica Eye is a name I always knew about. I look up to a lot of the girls I fight but she was one of the women’s pioneers. When I was starting training, she was an awesome amateur fighter. It seemed kind of surreal because I knew I had a lot of disadvantages going in to the fight. I didn’t have a place to train. She did. She lives with her training partners. She had all of the UFC PI equipment in her garage. She was getting ready for a grappling match. I was in the gym for two weeks. I was just moving into a new place. I had to get through a lot of things to be able to pull that victory off. I just took out the number one-ranked fighter in the new division I was coming after. I was on cloud nine. I couldn’t ask for a better opportunity. 

What was it like to battle, even in training, to even make it to the fight with all of the things that are going on in the world at the moment?

The fact that the pandemic was going on, I don’t know that I would have even got the opportunity to be in the main event. It took a lot of that feeling off. With all the testing and not being able to have everything around, it was a unique situation. This is something that we are all going to remember in history when the whole world was upside down. I didn’t have enough time to think about a lot of the extra stuff. With all of my experience of getting ready with other fight camps, I knew I had no time to get stressed out or worry or get overwhelmed with the idea of what I had to go do, which was to go try to take out the number one-ranked flyweight in the main event with all eyes on you. We did what we could to prepare the best way we could with the time we were given. It was all pretty nuts.