In a few short weeks, in the main event of the UFC’s June 17 trip to Singapore, former UFC bantamweight champion Holly Holm will attempt to rebound from a three-fight losing streak when she takes on former title challenger Bethe Correia.
In advance of this key bantamweight showdown, Correia has had plenty to say about Holm, most notably telling MMAFighting that she was overrated, and that she planned to knock her out.
In a more recent interview with WMMARankings.com, Holm offered up a rebuttal to Correia’s comments, and seems to be taking it all in stride.
“She’s entitled to her own opinion.” Holm said. “It really doesn’t do anything to me it doesn’t affect me. There’s a lot of people that sit here and judge, but I work hard and I’m going to work hard just for her.”
Holm then offered up a bit of insight as to her strategy for this fight, saying that she doesn’t plan on changing too much of her game up, despite her losing streak, and will instead focus on putting all her technique together.
“Not really, [I don’t have to change things],” Holm said. “I mean, I want to have fun with it partly too, I don’t want to be constantly stressing on anything, and I want to have fun while I’m doing it. I think that I’ve been trying to learn so much, that I put so much emphasis on trying to do everything all the time, and you know, I really just want to let it come together and put it all together rather than just feel like it’s all pieced apart. I feel like that’s where I’m at now. I feel like I’ve learned a lot over my last three fights and it’s time to put it all together. I feel like I’ve been keeping it in pieces rather than letting it be this combined arsenal, this combined set of skills.”
“I know that [Correia’s] tough, that she doesn’t really stop for anything, so I definitely want to be technical in this fight and I don’t want to be messy,” Holm continued. “She does use her jab and moves around a little bit, but she can definitely be a scrappy style as well. I don’t want to make the fight look messy, I want to be a good, technical fighter. I want to be able to implement all my techniques, I want to be able to capitalize on a lot of things, and that’s my plan.”
Do you think Holly Holm will return to winning ways against Bethe Correia this June?
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 5/2/2017.