Ashlee Evans-Smith is currently back at home after picking up a decision win over Bec Rawlings on the preliminary card of UFC 223.
While Evans-Smith is happy with getting the win, one thing she realizes is that more work still needs to be done.
“Yes and no (on whether or not she was happy with her UFC 223 performance), I was pretty confident I was gonna get the finish. I didn’t finish her, she is a really tough girl…I’ll give her that. I am happy with my performance as far as showcasing all the different skills that I have, I would have like to wrestle more and maybe if I was able to put that together and time my grappling more, maybe I would’ve got the finish. Like I said in a couple of other interviews, I am still pretty new to the sport. I have under ten fights and even though the majority of them have been in the UFC, I still consider myself a rookie. I think that once I start putting everything together, I think I’ll be able to shine then and be able to get finishes and knockouts and TKO’s, left and right…no more unanimous decisions,” Evans-Smith said in an exclusive interview with Fightful’s James Lynch.
Evans-Smith has fought six of her ten professional MMA bouts in the UFC, going 3-3-0 overall in the promotion.
The female fighting star was on the bus attacked by former UFC Lightweight Champion Conor McGregor days before UFC 223, but she feels bad for the other fighters more than herself.
“I keep getting that question because I was actually at the event, smashed in the middle basically. I really wasn’t affected in a negative way, in fact, the only way it affected me was in a positive way because my fight got moved from (UFC) Fight Pass to Fox Sports 1. Which is more exposure for me, but it doesn’t mean I wasn’t thrown back by what he did. I’m heartbroken for all the fighters that didn’t get to fight, they lose it all on their paychecks. All the hard work that they did…their families fly out there, its just like…how could you do that to those people? When you know exactly what its like to dedicate that time and sacrifice and having everything ride on that, like financial stuff. It just really hurt my heart for those people because I met those people, like Mike Chiesa. You go and you see them a little bit later, you see the heartbreak in their eyes because they didn’t get to do what they love to do…what they trained so hard to do. That pissed me the f*ck off, it really, really did. I can’t believe he did that, but other than that, I stayed focused because I knew that worst case scenario…that whole card was gonna get scrapped…it crossed my mind. I couldn’t focus on that, so I stayed focused on the weight cut…visualizing the fight. I even wrote a blog about it last night on the plane, I’m going to release it either tonight or tomorrow. Its my experience at (UFC) 223, it really wasn’t that bad, but I did have some other interesting experiences at 223…I write about that,” says Evans-Smith.
Another thing Evans-Smith mentioned in the interview is that she would like to fight again this July, which means a potential bout at UFC 226 or the UFC Ultimate Fighter 27 Finale.
