Michelle Waterson Credits Her Family’s Problems With Making Her A Stronger Fighter

In an interview with MMA Fighting, Michelle Waterson said that the problems that her family is going through helped her eventually become a stronger fighter. Here are highlights:

On the issues plaguing her family: “We were in the process of buying a new house. And in the process of buying a new house, my father-in-law got into a really bad car accident that paralyzed him. [Husband] Josh has a younger brother who is 12, and his dad was in the hospital, and their life changed in a split second. So, to help his mother out, we took in his little brother. It was the beginning of the school year for him, and it was a huge transition for him and a huge transition for us, a huge transition for his parents. It was kind of a hard pill to swallow. When you’re in fight camp, you tend to be very selfish, because you have to, in order to get in the right mind frame to fight.”

Michelle Waterson on how it helps her keep things in perspective: “In the morning when I’m waking up and going on my runs, you know, I have the ability to get out of bed and go for this run, and my father-in-law can’t even scratch his nose if he wanted to. He’s stuck in the hospital. Those are the things that kind of pulled at me and made me kind of look at life run differently.”

Michelle Waterson on not being sure if she’d join a UFC atomweight division: “I know I am a natural 105er, but it was my decision to come up to 115 so that I can compete in the UFC. In doing that, those are the things I have to deal with. Going into this fight, that was her biggest strength was her size. Every time I go against somebody, if I allow her size to be a determining factor, then I’m feeding into what everything else thinks they’re going to have an upper hand on. So I went into this fight with the mentality size doesn’t matter. We both weighed in at 115. Its equal, we’re just proportioned differently.”