Before their recent bout at Bellator 94, strawweight MMA fighters Felice Herrig and Heather Clark were already taking shots at each other.
But while their heated weigh-in staredown drew extra eyes to their match on March 28, neither woman showed great sportsmanship in a post-fight scuffle after the final round.
Herrig later posted a public apology for her actions on Twitter, explaining the reason for the bad blood between herself and Clark.
According to Herrig, Clark had been trying to fight her for “almost 2 years” while allegedly insulting her for supposedly not wanting to move up to 125 pounds:
First off I want to apologize to any of my fans that thought what I did was unsportsmanlike. Looking back on it now I probably shouldn’t have reacted that way but my emotions got the better of me.
Heather has been on a mission for almost 2 years now trying to fight me and has done the typical trashing of me to try and get that attention to do it. My management told her she didnt need to go that route and simply needed to prove she could make 115lbs and we would consider it. Instead she kept up her hypocritical insults and continued to fight at 125lbs.
After Herrig and Clark finished a competitive match at Bellator 94, Herrig yelled in Clark’s face, celebrating her own fourth straight MMA victory. Clark responded by backhanding Herrig across the face, which prompted Herrig to strike back before referee Jorge Ortiz separated them.
Herrig also noted in her Twitter message that she was “tired” of “bigger girls” challenging her to matches outside of her natural weight class.
To date, the 28-year-old Texan has not fought outside of the 115-pound division, where she’s currently rated as the No. 5 fighter via MMA Rising’s Unified Women’s Mixed Martial Arts Rankings.
Prior to their fight, Herrig also shoved Clark at the Bellator 94 weigh-ins, pushing back the taller, bigger fighter after they both made weight at the strawweight limit.
Regardless of the minor controversy, Herrig’s win in her second Bellator MMA appearance cements her status as one of the top-ranked and more recognizable female fighters in her division.
Herrig has gone on an undefeated 4-0 run since 2012, with her last loss coming against Carla Esparza, the current Invicta FC strawweight champion. Clark, a Greg Jackson’s MMA team member, has fallen to 1-3 in her last four fights, with Bellator 94 marking her first set of career back-to-back losses.
McKinley Noble is an MMA conspiracy theorist. His work has appeared in NVision, PC World, Macworld, GamePro, 1UP, MMA Mania & The LA Times.
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