Herrig: I can beat PVZ everywhere

UFC strawweight Felice Herrig spoke with the phenomenal Submission Radio, ahead of her fight with Paige VanZant at UFC on FOX 15 on April 18 at Prudential Center in Newark, NJ. Vanzant had previously called Herrig predictable, to which Herrig offered a quick retort.

I think the only thing predictable about me is that I can beat her anywhere the fight goes,” said Herrig. “I know I’m a better striker than her, I know I’m a better wrestler than her, I know I’m better on the ground than her, I know I’m physically stronger than her, I know I have more experience than her. Everybody has a punchers chance, but I definitely wouldn’t bet against me in this.

“It’s just, you know I think she’s actually so new and so green into this sport that she really doesn’t get it. She doesn’t realize that there is a difference in – like what, she’s got is 5, 6 fights? You know? I’ve been fighting for 12, 13 years now. Between kickboxing, boxing, Muay Thai, MMA I have over 50 fights. I was the world champion Muay Thai fighter. Honestly there’s nothing Paige is going to do to me that I haven’t seen before or felt before. I really don’t believe she’s better than me anywhere.

I don’t see this fight going all the way, and I definitely see it being stopped, whether it’s by the ref, or the doctor, or – I don’t even know if her corner is allowed to throw in the towel anymore, but it’s not going 15 minutes I will tell you that … I really think that I’m going to knock her out in round one or round two.

“I think that everybody got to see the girls in the Ultimate Fighter, they got to see everybody get weeded out; but all people have seen of Paige is this one fight and they think like ‘oh she’s so good, she’s so great’, and I’m not taking anything away from her, she’s a good little fighter, but I think that when I fight Paige, people are going to see a difference in levels. I don’t think that this is actually an evenly matched up fight at all.

While Mark Hunt has Hassy, women MMA fighters generally and Felice Herrig in particular attract fans that make Hassy look like, well, normal.

We were here in Pennsylvania and this guy showed up at Dave & Busters,” said Herrig. “He was in line waiting for an autograph, he comes in, he comes up to me, he whispers in my ear ‘Can we go somewhere and talk?’ I’m like ‘No I gotta sit here and do this signing.’ He sits down on a chair for the next three hours, stares at me, doesn’t order a drink, nothing.

“I get a letter in the mail, a piece of fan mail, didn’t know it was from him, with a visa card, saying ‘my daughter, my beautiful daughter. I’m your long lost father. I want to come out and see you. I don’t have the finances. Can you put money on this prepaid card?’ and like he was serious, and I like posted that as a creepy message.

“Then a couple of weeks later I get another message with like a Buddhist bible or something, or a Muslim bible, and again another letter saying ‘I thought it was very rude of you to post that on your page. I still love you, you’re my daughter, blah, blah, blah’ and then I open up this card and it’s like these pictures fall out of like me and him at the event, and then a picture.

“Like I think he wanted me to cut this picture up into like wallet [size]. There was like four pictures on the page, they were like wallet size. He wanted me to put one in my wallet, put one in a key chain, and put one in my locker. I don’t know, it was kind of creepy. Oh and then when I was at the Dave & Busters, as soon as he saw me getting up to leave, he bolts for the front door like he was going barricade me or something. So the manager took me out the back door. It was just weird. It’s weird.

Whne the legendary Fedor Emelianenko expressed views about women’s MMA that could charitably be described as traditional, both UFC former UFC strawweight champion Carla Esparza and new champ Joanna Jedrzejczyk took the high road. The often frank Herrig did too.

I actually didn’t hear that, but I also think that it might be….you know like some morals and values are stricter in certain countries too,” she said. “I don’t know. I don’t know how things are over there in Russia.

Some people don’t like watching woman get hit. My uncle for instance. He’s not prejudiced against women’s MMA, he loves me, he supports me, but he will not watch me fight. He does not like to watch me get hit. Some people just, it doesn’t suit them well

I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and say it’s just because he’s a really good guy and he doesn’t believe that woman should be treated that way.

Herrig is after all a fighter. And like many fighters, she says she is experiencing memory issues.

I have like this thing called like rapid brain cell loss, where I think that fighting is catching up to me now. I can’t remember like simple little things, but I remember like my childhood friend’s dog’s name. I remember the dumb trivial stuff like that. (laughs)

The thing is I’ve always been a brawler,” she said. “Especially when I fight – like I fought kickboxing and boxing; I would take so many shots to the head and not care. I’d be like ‘oh you hit me once? Okay I’m going to come back 10 times’. So I would stay in the pocket and I would let people hit me because honestly, like I didn’t care. It didn’t affect me, it didn’t hurt me, but now I’m like ‘oh, is this catching up to me?’. Now I don’t wanna get hit so much. I’m like ‘damn, I can feel my brain cells falling out every time I get hit now.’

However, Herrig would love a fight with Jedrzejczyk, the division’s best striker.

I think stylistically I probably would have been a better match up against Joanna than somebody like Carla who’s, you know a wrestler, who If she can’t get somebody down, she just doesn’t necessarily have an answer for Joanna,” said Herrig.

Herrig has garnered attention for her exciting fighting style, and for weigh in outfits that are, well exciting. There is even a chance they will survive the Reebok deal.

Well my next fight outfit – the Reebok deal doesn’t fall into effect until July, so I do have a very special outfit name planned for my next fight, weigh-ins, everything,” she said. “And then, I wasn’t there, but my manager also manages Carla Esparza too, [so] he was at the Reebok meeting – which I’m going to be at my next fight as well – and they said that they did specifically say that they realize that certain people have you know, their own style and image and depending on who it is they might be willing to work with that and work around it. So I’m hoping that Reebok sees what I bring to the table.

“My last fight was on the Ultimate Fighter, so on the last show I had to wear all Ultimate Fighter clothes, and in the finale I had to wear Ultimate Fighter clothes. So a lot of the people who didn’t follow my career before the UFC have only seen the UFC and haven’t really gotten to see all my themes and all my cosplay, and I’m hoping that I can work out a deal with Reebok and try to incorporate some of my cosplay and some of my themes into my fights.