LOS ANGELES – Carla Esparza carried herself into The Ultimate Fighter 20 with the confidence of a champion.
Until she actually set foot in the infamous TUF house, that is.
The Redondo Beach, Calif. native entered the race to become the first UFC women’s strawweight champion with a head start as the inaugural Invicta 115-pound champion.
But as soon as Esparza arrived in Las Vegas, she realized that gold belt may as well have a bulls-eye on it.
“When I got there, I was like, oh crap,” the fighter known as “The Cookie Monster” said at the recent TUF 20 media day. “Everyone outside, my family, my friends, fans, they think I’m going to come here and win it. It was hard to have the pressure and realize it. It became real when I got into the house.”
Esparza – who is known for her friendship with Felice Herrig, who is far from the most popular fighter among her peers — says that as the weeks went on, she found herself developing negative opinions on fighters she didn’t previously know.
“There was nobody that I disliked that I ended up liking,” Esparza said. “If anything, it was the other way around. There were people I had respect for, and a couple people who I didn’t even know who they were, and then I ended up not caring for them that much after the show.”
She leaves the details on who those fighters may be for the show, which debuts Wednesday night on FOX Sports 1. But she has no problem speaking freely on the would-be rival she’s never actually faced, Brazil’s Claudia Gadelha.
Esparza and Gadelha were twice slated to meet in Invicta. They were scheduled to square off and crown the first strawweight champion at Invicta 4, but Gadelha pulled out with a broken nose and was replaced by Bec Rawlings, whom Esparza beat to win the title. They were then signed for Invicta 7, but this time, Gadelha came down with an infection the night before the fight and again had to withdraw.
Gadelha was one of 11 Invicta strawweights whose contracts were purchased by the UFC, but she refused to enter TUF 20, citing weight-cutting concerns.
“I wish she would have been on the show,” Esparza said. “The reason Claudia didn’t get on the show, she said it was a weight-cutting thing. She’s a huge 115-pounder, and I felt like I would have had a huge advantage with that because I cut nothing, if anything, I’ve come in underweight. I walk around underweight. So I think I would have had an opportunity with that.”
While Esparza went into the TUF house considering Gadelha her main opposition. Gadelha is 12-0 and won her UFC debut against Tina Lahdemaki in July. But Esparza, based on what she saw over the course of the season, is not convinced Gadelha would have necessarily advanced to the finals.
“I think on paper, Claudia would have been the biggest competition,” Esparza said. “She was supposed to fight me for my Invicta belt, so she’s obviously considered to be the top contender at the time. I’d say being in the house, a lot of people surprised me, they came out with different skillsets, they improved, they evolved. In reality? Who knows, she could have been beaten by anyone in the house. I wasn’t too impressed by her performance in the first UFC fight.”
At this point, Esparza wonders if she’ll ever get a chance to face Gadelha.
“I don’t care for her too much, she started a beef with me on Twitter, she started talking crap,” Esparza said. “I feel like we definitely would have had drama in the house, so on that aspect i was glad she wasn’t there, but just to have the opportunity to fight her, this would have been the third time. It was another missed opportunity.”
But from the sound of things, she wouldn’t go back into the TUF house to make it happen.
“I think it was like a combination of a prison and sorority,” Esparza said. “It was a good experience, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world, but I don’t know if I would do it again.”