Jessica Eye asked about social media beef with Joanne Calderwood

Jessica Eye fights Joanne Calderwood on the main card of UFC 257 on Saturday. The two have bickered bitterly on Twitter, but the root cause is worse by far than any pre-fight trash talk.

Eye missed weight .25 pounds for her last fight, a main event loss vs. Cynthia Calvillo at UFC on ESPN 10 on June 13, 2020. The fight before that, a win vs. Viviane Araujo at UFC 245 on December 14, 2019, Eye missed by five pounds. The failed weight cuts sparked the social network sparring between the two. But the cause of the terrible weight cuts was a gall bladder that had to be removed. Eye has recovered fully from the surgery, and that’s her focus at present, as she made clear at Tuesday’s UFC 257 media day.

I don’t have beef with anybody, said Eye. If you have beef with me, it’s probably because you don’t like yourself and I’ve said something about you that you don’t like about yourself.

To be honest, I really didn’t know there was an animosity but I guess that’s what happens when you are argueing with people via social media. I don’t really feel there’s a beef. If that’s what’s going to get her out of bed to come fight me, OK. How do you have beef with another fighter? She never did anything to me. I don’t even know her. Come on, now.

Thank god I lost that fight [vs . Calvillo] because me losing that fight means I get to be a better me. Cause I had no idea what I was truly dealing with. I think that fighters are the biggest liars in the world cause we lie about pain all the time. Whether we’re in it or whether we feel it, I think I was lying to myself for many, many years about the things I was feeling. After this last fight, it was so bad. The weight cut was absolutely terrible. It wasn’t until I was in the hospital on July 7 is when I finally found out that something was very wrong with me.

I’ve got a little bit of a chip on my shoulder. I really saw some really dark times and I felt really, really bad. When you think that you’re a survivor, like I was a survivor of abuse and stuff like that, but to go through something so traumatic like that. To have an organ removed from my body, there’s definitely been some things that I’ve had deal with in that way to really overcome it to the fact that I feel very, very powerful.

I definitely have a chip on my shoulder because I was dealing with something I was trying to hide. I’ve said it now a couple of times, fighters are the biggest liars in the world. We lie about pain all the time. Like all the time, on a daily basis. I’m not hurting. I have no injuries. I have no excuse. So Jojo, if you beat me, you beat me because you’re the better person.