Issue 182

September 2019

The Bellator flyweight on making the move from boxing into MMA and the joys of winging it.

You are very honest with yourself, talking in interviews about certain areas where you need to improve and how you need to stay in your own lane. Many fighters aren’t that honest with themselves or at least in the public eye. Where does that honesty come from?

That’s how I am in my real life. Fighters are who they are in front of cameras and who they are in front of people. I am very self-aware. I have no shame in my shortcomings, whether it’s in my personal life or in my career. I know that I am a world champion boxer but there are tons of areas of my game that can improve.

I am not a knockout puncher. People think it is so shameful when I say that, but it’s who I am. I don’t feel ashamed to say that. There is a ton of my fight game that needs work. I jumped into MMA in 2017 knowing nothing. I didn’t even try jiu-jitsu until my third MMA fight. Literally, my third pro fight, I didn’t even try anything. I was just winging it. Now I am starting to learn that I can get really good at this. Now that I am learning how to do things and now that I am getting a little more experience.

Right now, I have to ease my way back in. I was out of the cage for 17 months. I am not looking to fight Ilima-Lei (MacFarlane) for this fight. Who knows what will happen further down the line? I will keep stepping up in opponents and see how far I can actually take this.

Being such an accomplished boxer, what was the very first grappling session like for you?

I was actually at (Ray) Longo’s gym for my first time ever. It was like ‘Hey let’s see if she can do this.’ It was boxing with take-downs. I can go into Gleason’s Gym and box 12 three-minute rounds like it is nothing and then go do a full workout afterwards. After my first round at Longo’s I was exhausted. It was a two-minute round of boxing with take-downs and I was like ‘oh my God.’ Going on the floor and standing up, going on the floor and standing up, it is a totally different animal. It has been an evolution of my conditioning as well.

With that long 17-month layoff, what areas of your game did you work on most in the lead up to the return to the cage?

I have taken tons of cage wrestling classes. I am just working around the cage. I have been doing tons of kickboxing because with boxing you stand sideways and your front leg is so exposed, so I have been working on changing up my fight position and stance.

I have been working on so many things in the camp that I don’t know that I could name all of them. It’s been a lot of sparring and doing live drills with different partners so I can see where my shortcomings are and how to patch up the holes and at the very least get on the things that maybe I don’t have the time to learn but I need to figure out a way around.

What’s the best gym story you can share with us that sticks out to you during your crossover from boxing to MMA?

I am a clown in the gym. Ray Longo says I am having too much fun in there and he always tells me to get serious when I’m sparring. One of the things that always used to crack up my kickboxing sparring partners is that every time they would kick me on the legs I would say ‘Ouch.’ I would be like, ‘yes. I’m fine. It’s just a reaction. It hurts. Let’s just go.’ Or my sparring partner would throw a front kick up in my face and I would say “Whoa!’ They are like, ‘can you act like you’ve seen this before?’

You have very long days, 15 hours to be exact, from your private lessons and your own training at Gleason’s Gym and then travelling to Long Island to work with Ray Longo. What is the whirlwind of your average day like?

My day starts at 6AM and it entails all the things you just said. I work with my morning clients really early. Those are the guys that pay the bills for me when I am six months off not fighting. I do kind of a two-hour boxing and karate session with my coach. We go over my form and stance and my blocks and kicks and all that stuff. Then I work with clients for a couple of hours. I do conditioning training in Queens, so I travel there. Some days I come back home. Then on my off-work days, five days a week, I am out later in the afternoon travelling to go to Longo’s to train. I mean, its 8:30 or 9:00 before I hit the front door.

I am fortunate that my kid is 15 now, so I can have pre-made dinners in the fridge and make sure she lays out her homework. I don’t have to keep so much on top of her anymore. She can help out with the last few weeks of camp that involve so much pressure.

People ask me all the time how I balance it all. It’s virtually impossible to balance it all. That is what separates the good from the great. You learn, you grow, you make time and you make sacrifices. My friends can’t wait until my fights are over because they haven’t seen me for the month prior.