Now that they have settled things in the Octagon, Saturday night’s bantamweight challenger Bethe Correia had a moment to think about the lead-up to UFC 190.
Heading into her fight with Ronda Rousey, Correia made off-color remarks about hoping Rousey wouldn’t “kill herself” after losing to her. The comments made the fight more personal for Rousey, whose father committed suicide when she was a young girl.
In the end, it was Correia who was knocked out in 34 seconds against Rousey in Rio de Janeiro. And in the aftermath, Correia was asked if she regretted making those comments, which served as fuel for Rousey through her training camp.
“I don’t regret anything, and everything I said was very sincere,” Correia said during the post-fight press conference. “It was my point of view and it was what I believed in. I think I did a great job. The event was wonderful. It wasn’t the result I wanted, but I think that everything I said was something that I thought. I’m a very sincere person and I don’t take back anything that happened. But of course with this fight, I have a lot of lessons that I learned.”
Correia was knocked out by Rousey (12-0) along the fence just half-a-minute into the action. Asked to assess her performance and to put a finger on what went wrong, Correia said it was a bad sequence of events.
“I started out well,” she said. “I think she felt my strikes and she tried to grab me, and I defended the takedown. But those things happen. Her hands landed and that’s her merit, and I really felt it. But I thought I was doing the right game, which was to attack, counter-attack, defend her takedowns and hit her. But at that moment I slipped. I got up and she connected a good punch, and that’s what happened.”
The loss was the first of Correia’s career. She now has a professional record of 9-1.