Norma Dumont had a rough, rough weight cut heading into the Felicia Spencer fight at UFC Vegas 27.
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) women’s featherweight Norma Dumont had a gruelling weight cut heading into her fight with Felicia Spencer
Dumont (8-1) eked out a split decision victory over Spencer (8-3) at UFC Vegas 27, which took place at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, Nevada on Sat., May 22. Dumont took the fight on short notice but the struggle started well before she entered the Octagon.
“It was a pretty tough thing,” Dumont told MMA reporter Drake Riggs. “I accepted the fight with three weeks’ notice. I had tried to make weight before and it hadn’t worked out so I was still under the effect of weight cutting. My insides, my organs were still hurting on fight day. So I wasn’t perfectly prepared. We knew she wasn’t a spectacular fighter, she’s obviously a great fighter, but we knew that I could beat her in all forms of fighting so we ended up accepting the fight.
“I felt lots of pressure in getting the job done. I’m happy that I did get it done but in that fight, I did what was possible. I wasn’t healthy, I wasn’t feeling well, I really did what I was able to. It was far from ideal performance. In the third round, for example, I felt lots of stomach pain so I needed to slow down a bit. Yeah, it was a good job but far from the potential that I know that I have.”
Dumont kept the issue to herself.
“On fight day; Saturday morning, I didn’t tell anyone that,” she said of her pains. “But I was feeling a sort of stabbing sensation in my stomach. The only person who kind of knew was my husband. He saw me punching and massaging my stomach so I could kind of warm up my organs. He would ask me what was going on and I didn’t tell him anything.
“After the fight, I told him about it. I told him that I was feeling a pain in my stomach in the third round and that I felt I needed to slow down because I felt that I was worried about getting punched in my midsection. Maybe I wouldn’t make it until the end of the fight. So I really had to slow down the fight. I wasn’t able to give it my all and knowing that makes me a lot more confident. Knowing that in that performance, if I had been better, I would have been able probably to finish it because I would have been able to go a lot stronger against her.”
UFC’s women’s featherweight division appeared on the verge of extinction and Dumont was asked to move down to bantamweight.
“That’s a really complex subject. It’s actually a very difficult subject for me…” she said of cutting down to bantamweight. “Because, well, when I first went to the UFC, I told them I wanted to fight at featherweight because if I went to bantamweight I’d have to lose a lot of weight, a lot of muscle. They ended up accepting that so they tried to find an opponent for me — they said they couldn’t find one. So they told me to go down a weight class. We began the process of going back down and it was a very difficult diet, we cut proteins, it was still really difficult to get the pounds down.
That is when Holly Holm came to the rescue.
“After a while, [UFC Matchmaker] Mick [Maynard] asked me if I would accept a fight against Holly Holm,” Dumont shared. “He said that she normally accepts fights against opponents, she had been out for around a year, it would probably be good for her to go up a weight class. So we accepted it right away and she accepted it too.
“The way things work for me is… I would really like featherweight to continue existing so I wouldn’t have to continue sacrificing my body to make it to bantamweight,” she added. “The way I see it, things can go two ways. I win against Holly and I fight against Amanda [Nunes] and I win that fight and I bring a new heir and a new feeling to the division. Or I’ll lose and the division will probably die.”
Dumont vs. Holm will take place at the UFC Fight Night card on Sat., Oct. 16.
Finished reading this story? The party doesn’t have to stop. Click here to get more of the latest UFC news.