Jessica Eye hoped she would be the next one to challenge UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey. Instead, Bethe Correia has that honor, this coming August, in her native Brazil.
Eye is certainly motivated for her July 25 fight against Miesha Tate, but she explained to Submission Radio recently that there would be a certain special feeling to dethroning the world’s most dominant athlete. “I want to be the one to dethrone the champion,” she said.
“I want to be that person, you know, and why wouldn’t I want to be that person? Why wouldn’t I want to go down in the history books? Why wouldn’t I want to be the one that — it’s almost like it’s an empire fall, you know, and get that chance to rebuild and just be something bigger.”
The Ohio native believes that she’d bring an intensity that no other Rousey opponent has. “Evil Eye” wouldn’t half-step if she got a chance to tango with Rousey in the UFC Octagon.
“Fireworks are gonna happen,” she said.
“And I think that a lot of people that have fought her previously have shown no conviction and they show no conviction to a game plan, and they didn’t stick to anything, and they’ve lost it halfway through the fight — maybe even in the first round. I think that I can show that [conviction].”
Eye’s fighting spirit doesn’t just come from her years of training in MMA, but also from something far deeper, originating in a painful past. “Let’s just say a very bad childhood made me … it was almost like I’m a Samurai,” she explained.
“It beat me up for so many years that finally when it’s time for me to go to battle I’m extremely sharp. … Everyone knows Jessica Eye the MMA fighter. You don’t know my whole story. And that’s OK. I don’t need everyone to know my story, but just know that I bring something to the cage that no other females can bring, and that is my conviction. And my conviction comes from past experience that other people didn’t live. I did.”
She’ll bring that and more into the Octagon against Tate. After all, Eye has to beat the former champion to get her title fight against either Rousey or Correia.
Though she respects Tate’s abilities, Eye simply believes that she’s better, everywhere. “I know I’m better everywhere it goes,” she concluded.
“The striking, cage work, ground, everything. … My birthday is two days after the fight, so I’m definitely going to give myself a fantastic present. So we’re definitely going for that $50,000 bonus there. But, you know, if she’s lucky I’ll stop it early.”
Courtesy of: Fox Sports