Michelle Waterson Addresses Learning From Her Recent Losses

UFC fighter Michelle Waterson recently spoke to reporters in a media scrum this week (via MMAjunkie). Below are some highlights from the scrum. Waterson will face Cortney Casey at UFC on FOX 29 later this Saturday.

Her thoughts on Joanna Jedrzejczyk saying she’s still the queen of the division: “I think that’s just a part of Joanna’s personality, and it’s just a part of Joanna’s persona and one of the ways that she deals with adversity. She is tough, mentally, and she continues to stay tough mentally as she deals with her failures. And that’s how she deals with her failures. We all deal with them differently. Some of us laugh at ourselves. Some of us cry, go in the corner, hide. And that’s just the way she deals with her challenges.”

Waterson on continuing her journey: “I’m just continuing my journey. I’m loving every step of the way. There’s no shame to have lost to the girls that I’ve lost to – one of them being the champ and the other being one of the girls who has beaten the champ. I have learned from those fights, and it only makes me stronger. So I’m excited to go into this fight and display the things that I’ve learned and also to display myself.”

Waterson on her losses and learning from them: “It’s like when I tell my daughter, if she does something wrong, if she gets frustrated or something like that and she cries. Emotion is natural, and it’s OK to cry. But what I tell her is, ‘Does this crying solve the problem?’ And as she’s crying and wiping her tears she says, ‘No.’ So what do you do to solve the problem? That’s exactly what you do: You solve the problem. And then you just get over it. And you learn from it, and you get better from it. Obviously, it hurt. It made me kind of want to go in the corner and cry a bit – and I did. And then I brushed it off. Like, whatever. Life is all about falling and getting back up. When a baby learns to walk, it doesn’t complain because it doesn’t – it just learns to walk. And you should view life that way.”

Her thoughts on the Namajunas vs. Jedrzejczyk rematch: “I feel like the rematch between Rose an Joanna is only going to make the girls more hungry because it humanized Joanna, a bit, and I feel like Joanna has fought a lot of the girls already, that are in the top-tier of the division, so it opens up a lot of new matches with Rose being the champ.”

Waterson on how Jedrzejczyk adjusted after the first fight with Namajunas: “I feel like, after the first fight with Rose, Joanna came into this fight a lot more respectful of Rose’s power. And it was bound to happen. If it wasn’t with Rose, it would have been somebody else. It’s just the nature of a fighter’s journey. When you first get into fighting, you’re fearless. Just like when you’re a kid, you’re fearless. And when you jump in a pool and you do flips until you fall on your head. And then you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m not going to do that again.’ It’s the same with fighting. When you first start fighting, you’re fearless and you’re pulling off these crazy submissions and these crazy knockouts because you’ve never been pushed. You’ve never been stopped. When you stop, it does something to your brain to make you a bit more hesitant, to make you a bit more aware, to make you a bit more cautious. Sometimes that can be good, sometimes that can be bad, but it’s just a part of our journey.”