Liz Carmouche will go down in the history books as the first female fighter to set foot in the UFC octagon. Thrust into the spotlight to be the first opponent for UFC golden child Ronda Rousey, Carmouche went from relative obscurity to being a recognisable name in mainstream MMA.
“It’s still surreal to me,” she told MMASucka.com, “It took about a month or so for the experience to really sink into my brain…but I’m still having a hard time that I was the first fight ever and I made history. It’s probably going to be another year before it really hits me.”
However, that fight did not go Carmouche’s way. In a shallow division with few top contenders, it is not outwith the realm of possibility that Carmouche could face Rousey again within the not too distant future. What would she do differently?
“There’s a lot that I would do differently,” Carmouche said, “In the preparation I would take a little bit more time for the fight, I thought I had taken enough time for it but I hadn’t…there were some fighters that wanted to come in for sparring that had a similar background as Ronda and we weren’t able to set that up in time. That’s definitely something I would set up, it would definitely be worth the money.”
“I had bruises on my arm from her teeth…anyone else would have tapped out to that neck crank. She even admitted that for a few months she was yawning and chewing thinking of me, because her jaw still hurt.”
After knocking out Jessica Andrade and losing to Alexis Davis last year to finish up at 1-2, Carmouche is looking to get back to winning ways in a fight against Miesha Tate that was originally scheduled last year before Tate was pulled in to coach against Ronda Rousey on The Ultimate Fighter.
“This is a fight that I’ve wanted for a long time,” Carmouche said, “We’ve been lined up to fight before, this will now be the third time, so I’m really anxious for this fight. Honestly I think our styles match up really well both standing and on the ground, so anywhere that it goes I’m ready for that.”
With the Davis fight, Carmouche suffered another disappointing setback, and Carmouche is clear on what went wrong in that fight: “I was fighting through some injuries that I was overlooking that I shouldn’t have overlooked – not to take away from Alexis, she did a great job, but sometimes you just show up and you’re not the fighter that you think you are. That night, I was just wasn’t pulling the trigger and I wasn’t there. Certainly that won’t be the case this Saturday.”
Carmouche refused to disclose what those injuries exactly were.
Being the first female fighter in the Octagon was not the only history Carmouche made last year, as she was also the UFC’s first openly LGBT fighter. This has put Carmouche at the forefront of the sport’s image in the LGBT community – something which can be challenging when Dana White and leading UFC fighters have had high profile incidents of homophobic comments or language. Just this week Jon Jones, who claims his Instagram was hacked, appeared to leave homophobic comments on a Swedish fan’s photographs.
However, Carmouche says she has not experienced any homophobia from UFC personnel: “Really the only cases I’ve come across are on social media – some people message me on Facebook and express their disinterest in my sexual preferences and their disagreement with my stance and me being outspoken…the UFC as a whole has been nothing but embracing of it.”
“I think it was something I wondered about but never something I worried about. My stance going into this was that if my sexual orientation was going to limit my fighting career or take away from sponsors or fights, it meant that they weren’t supposed to happen. If it meant that I lost out on fighting in general, then it was worth it for me to be honest and open.”
