Latest news with #Waterson-Gomez
USA Today
07-05-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Analyst: Pissed off champ Valentina Shevchenko beats Manon Fiorot at UFC 315
Analyst: Pissed off champ Valentina Shevchenko beats Manon Fiorot at UFC 315 Michelle Waterson-Gomez thinks it was a bad idea for Manon Fiorot to fuel the fire underneath Valentina Shevchenko going into UFC 315. In her pursuit to secure Saturday's women's flyweight title shot against Shevchenko (24-4-1 MMA, 13-3-1 UFC) at Bell Centre in Montreal (ESPN+ pay-per-view, ESPN, ESPN+), the streaking Fiorot (12-1 MMA, 7-0 UFC) claimed she would retire from MMA if she falls short of gold, and that the champion isn't the dominant force she used to be. Shevchenko told MMA Junkie she expects Fiorot to honor those words if she fails this weekend, and intends to make it definitive. For UFC analyst Waterson-Gomez, seeing that extra edge around Shevchenko is a promising sign going into the fight. "I think Shevchenko is going to secure the win," Waterson-Gomez told MMA Junkie. "I think Shevchenko is a little more well-rounded when it comes to MMA, and super heavy top pressure. If she has to she'll get it there. And I do think that she's motivated because she thinks Manon is like insincere about where she sits in terms of the type of fighter she is. She doesn't know if she's a respectful fighter or she's a talking sh*t kind of fighter, so I do think it kind of pisses Shevchenko off a little bit." Fiorot enters UFC 315 as the betting favorite, marking the first time Shevchenko has been the underdog entering a fight as titleholder. Despite that, Waterson-Gomez said she still sees Shevchenko as holding the upper hand, and would be somewhat surprised if Fiorot walked away with the gold. "I don't think I've seen enough of Manon to think she's the biggest threat," Waterson-Gomez said. "Shevchenko has been up against the best of the best in the entire division, and up a weight class. I think the biggest threat Manon has to offer is her speed. Her speed and her youth. She's fast, but it's not like Shevchenko hasn't been up against girls that are fast." To hear more from Waterson-Gomez, check out her complete appearance on "The Bohnfire" podcast with MMA Junkie senior reporter Mike Bohn above.
USA Today
07-05-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
UFC analyst: Belal Muhammad's no-takedown claim for UFC 315 fight 'hard to envision'
UFC analyst: Belal Muhammad's no-takedown claim for UFC 315 fight 'hard to envision' Belal Muhammad claims he's "not gonna shoot one takedown' in Saturday's UFC 315 title defense against Jack Della Maddalena, but does anyone believe him? The current welterweight champion Muhammad (24-3 MMA, 15-3 UFC) is beaming with confidence going into his attempted first defense against challenger Della Maddalena (17-2 MMA, 7-0 UFC) in the main event at Bell Centre in Montreal (ESPN+ pay-per-view, ESPN, ESPN+). Although Muhammad has been bold throughout his career, his track record has yet to match up with this particular assertion. He has attempted at least one takedown in 15 of his 19 octagon appearances, however, two of those performances without an attempt have come in two of his past three fights. Does that mean Muhammad will actually follow through and show Della Maddalena "the meaning of Canelo hands" then they step in the cage? UFC analyst Michelle Waterson-Gomez said she struggles to see it. "It's kind of hard to envision because Belal is not the type of fighter to take risks and switch it up, just because he wants too," Waterson-Gomez told MMA Junkie. "Especially as a champion. That's high risk. You want to be the reigning champion, you want to be able to defend that belt. I just think habitually as fighters we do try to switch it up so that we can cater to one opponent or the other, but eventually we revert back to what we are comfortable with because we know what we have to do in order to win. "How I see Belal winning is in that grappling exchanges, in his clinch work against the cage, and right there in that wedge between the cage and the ground. That's where I see him winning. Maybe he's trying to bait JDM into a getting into a slug fest so that it's easy to change levels on him and close the distance and put him against the cage. But who knows?" Waterson-Gomez said she won't complete discount the possibility of Muhammad leaning heavily on his striking at UFC 315. Is it his best path to victory on paper against a dangerous knockout threat like Della Maddalena? Conventional wisdom would suggest not, but Muhammad's entire rise to becoming UFC champion has been filled with moments of exceeding expectations. With Muhammad routinely training with Waterson-Gomez's former coach Mike Valle, who was named MMA Junkie's Coach of the Year in 2024, she doesn't want to rule out the champ's prediction is impossible. However, if Muhammad wants to find the path of least resistance, then mixing up his game would be the most advisable path. "Belal's training with one of my old striking coaches in Mike Valle and he is an amazing striking coach," Waterson-Gomez said. "Maybe Mike Valle has been working on some striking combinations or some things. We're all constantly evolving and growing and when you learn something cool inside training and want to show the world, that's the fun part. I did it training, now see if I can do it under the lights when it counts." To hear more from Waterson-Gomez, check out her complete appearance on "The Bohnfire" podcast with MMA Junkie senior reporter Mike Bohn above.
USA Today
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Michelle Waterson-Gomez channeling 'tug' to make UFC return into analyst, acting careers
Michelle Waterson-Gomez channeling 'tug' to make UFC return into analyst, acting careers Years of evidence proves the transition from active UFC fighter into retirement life is more difficult than seamless for the majority of athletes. Michelle Waterson-Gomez is in the midst of that struggle right now. After hanging up her gloves following a loss at UFC 313 in June, longtime octagon veteran and women's MMA pioneer Waterson-Gomez (18-13 MMA, 6-9 UFC) is going through a period of significant change. She has already found more post-career success than a lot of others who exit the sport, but she wouldn't claim it's been simple. "Anyone that tells you turning the page is easy – it's easier said than done," Waterson-Gomez told MMA Junkie. "I dedicated 18 years of my life to being a professional athlete, and now I have to switch gears and understand how to apply the discipline I had physically, the mental discipline, into a different type of hustle. I'm blessed and we're doing a lot of things, but right now, it's me having to prove myself all over again in these different arenas." Fortunately for Waterson-Gomez, the different arenas she has gravitated toward don't fall far from where she is comfortable. She is a desk analyst on UFC broadcasts with increasing regularity, and also added a big-time acting credit to her acting resume in Tom Hardy's HAVOC, which recently released on Netflix and for a stretch occupied the No. 1 spot for popular viewed movies. The role of analyst is something Waterson-Gomez is strongly embracing, she said. However, it's also the part of her new workload that generates the most temptation to return to competition. Waterson-Gomez, 39, only sees one place that she would ever fight MMA again, but she is doing her best to resist that urge and continue to use her plethora of experience in the sport to help educate viewers watching from home. "Even now watching the fights, having to call a fight (like Gillian Robertson vs. Marina Rodriguez at UFC n ESPN 67), where I fought both of these girls, it kind of gets my blood boiling and it makes me want to jump back in there," Waterson-Gomez said. "Especially hearing them on the mic and stuff, it's just like you want to get back in there. Once an athlete always an athlete, and it's hard to separate yourself from that, and it's very easy to fall back into getting into that routine because it's what you're used to. "It tugs at me all the time. As far as MMA goes, for me the UFC is the top of the top and if I were to ever go back it would be with the UFC. … I'm understanding now it's just that dedication of time. If I want to be great at this chapter, I have to dedicate my time to that. If I want to be a great analyst, if I want to be a great actor I have to dedicate just as much time to that as I did fighting." During her fighting career, Waterson-Gomez established a reputation as one of the most widely-beloved people in the industry. She always fought with heart, was not attached to any major controversies, and was an overall positive role model and ambassador for the sport. It's Waterson-Gomez's natural instinct to see the best or the most positive out of any situation or person, and although she understands that can't always be the reality when it comes to offering her opinions on the desk, that's the underlying outlook of how she wants to serve the fans. "The hardest part for me is when I talk about fights, I'm usually talking about fights with my friends and with my teammates, so it's not as PG," Waterson-Gomez said. "Trying to clean that up and tighten that up is hard for me, then also it's hard for me to cast judgement or analyze a fighter before I get to see them fight. That was something I always hated a fighter, seeing other people that weren't stepping into the octagon judge me and tell me what I was going to do stepping into the octagon. You don't know what I'm doing to do. You weren't with me when I'm training. "A lot of times when the fighters do interviews, a lot of when they are doing, if it's 100 percent of what they are doing, they are probably telling the reporter of the journalist 20 percent of what they are going to do. They are making their own stories up based off statistics, and I never wanted to box a fighter into what their capacity was in a statistic, but that's what I have to do. We have to analyze a fighter based off what we see, so wrapping my head around that and trying to do it in a way where I'm not disrespecting the fighters and more kind of enjoying both fighters and their strengths and trying to break down the fight in a way where it's the most respectful to both fighters." To hear more from Waterson-Gomez, check out her complete appearance on "The Bohnfire" podcast with MMA Junkie senior reporter Mike Bohn above.
