Issue 146
October 2016
Invicta strawweight champ Angela Hill has given her career new life with success outside the Octagon.
It was hard not to feel like Angel Hill was hard done by in the UFC. With just one previous pro MMA fight before she made her Octagon debut, she was one of its most inexperienced fighters ever. Then, after she won on the TUF 20 Finale card, she drew one of the toughest 115lb assignments around – Tecia Torres.
There was no shame in losing to the ‘Tiny Tornado’. She was far more experienced and possessed a takedown game that green grappler Hill just couldn’t hang with. The Brooklyn-born southpaw thought her next fight would give her the opportunity to remind everybody what she could do. She was wrong.
“The next fight I thought they’d give me someone a little less tough – most likely not in the top five. Then they gave me Rose (Namajunas), who’s a better grappler, and I was like, ‘Oh, f**k you guys!’ But I thought I was going to knock her out like I should have knocked Tecia out and everything was going to be great again. And then that didn’t happen (laughs).”
‘Overkill’ was submitted quickly and – despite her losses being against two top-five opponents – she was unceremoniously axed from the UFC roster. That’s often a fatal blow to a fighter’s career, but the New Yorker is one of the most overwhelmingly enthusiastic and optimistic personalities in prizefighting. Losing two fights wasn’t going to stop her.
“It felt like a lot of things weren’t working out for me in 2015. But after each fight, I was back in the gym the next Monday trying to fix everything. You can take losses one way or another. You can mope forever or just keep going,” she says.
Hill’s potential attracted the attention of Invicta Fighting Championships, which proved to be the perfect place to rediscover her form. The 28-year-old was relaxed and light on her feet from the minute she stepped into the all-female promotion’s cage – landing strikes at will. She sensationally stopped Alida Gray in 99 seconds at Invicta 15, then dispatched Stephanie Eggink with devastating knees two months later.
That punched her ticket to a title shot against the then-undefeated champion, Livia Renata Souza, in May. Most of the media favored the champion because of her strong grappling – Hill’s notorious Achilles heel. But she showed just how far she’d come by scrambling away from danger on the mat and implementing her Muay Thai over five rounds to claim the belt.
“When I got to Invicta and had my first fight there were a lot of doubters, but I could feel the difference in the way I was fighting. I felt like I was fighting smarter and it was easier to flow so I was really happy with that,” Hill says.
“Then I got the Eggink fight and the Livia fight. I’m pretty sure all the media outlets picked me to lose, so f**k those guys (laughs). I was able to say that to them by winning, so that was pretty cool.”
Hill might not be on Fox or pay-per-view, but she is fighting for the world’s top women’s organization. Her wins this year mean she’s regarded as one of the best strawweights in the world by several of the sport’s most trusted media outlets.
She says, beaming: “Everything’s so good, I feel like a legit champion and I worked really hard and got the job done. It’s nice. I’m getting appreciated more from the MMA community, I broke a lot of people’s unofficial top-10 lists and I feel a lot of people who doubted me before are finally jumping on the bandwagon and seeing I’ve got some good skills. I was just inexperienced when I was in the UFC.”
Picking up wins in Invicta is also a well-trodden path back into the UFC, but Alliance MMA’s latest world champion isn’t in any rush to return to the Octagon just yet. She explains: “There’s still a couple of people I want to beat in Invicta just so there’s no doubt. I beat some pretty tough competition already, but I want to beat (everyone) people think can beat me.
“There’s Alexa Grasso… There’s a lot of hype behind her, she has a couple of knockouts, she’s really pretty, the UFC is looking at her, so that would be a really good person for me to beat up. There’s also Mizuki Inoue, who beat bigger names.
“I’ve just got to focus on fighting and (Invicta is) the best environment for me right now. I just need to get as much experience as possible. That was really my goal. When I went to Invicta I was like, ‘OK. Experience time! You’ve got to fight as often as you can and try to get better each time.’
“It’s cool the belt happened along that path. Invicta was probably the best option for me at that moment and I couldn’t be happier.”
Stay ready
Opportunity knocks
Ahead of Invicta 16, Alexa Grasso was coming off an injury layoff and Stephanie Eggink was fighting for the first time since pregnancy. Hill saw her opportunity for a quick turnaround and to earn a title shot in record time, so she made sure she trained like she was already booked. Well, almost.
“I knew one of them was going to have some kind of complication,” she says. “The week I gave up on getting on it, I got the call from Julie (Kedzie, Invicta matchmaker). ‘Hey, wanna fight?’
“I was in the gym for about the same amount I would have been if I had a fight camp… Only I was drinking and partying a little more (laughs).”
Boss idol
Hill’s vote is for president Knapp
If there’s one person backing Angela Hill to go back to the UFC and do some damage, it’s Invicta president Shannon Knapp.
“She is really just in it for the fighters,” Hill says. “That’s really the most awesome thing. She doesn’t give a f**k about her promotion.
“She wants it to be something and it means something, for sure, but she’s not about holding back fighters for her own gain.
“It’s really cool to be part of an organization where (the promoter) isn’t trying to be Dana White. She’s totally not like that. She’s there to make us and women’s MMA look good. She’s pretty dope.”
