Marloes Coenen details events leading up to her release
Even before her fight with Tate, Coenen had a feeling that the only way she could save her job was…
Even before her fight with Tate, Coenen had a feeling that the only way she could save her job was with a win. On the day of weigh-ins, news had broken that Alistair Overeem had been cut from the promotion. It was an unsettling omen as she readied herself for a fight that both she and Tate saw as critical to their future – White had repeatedly hinted the future wasn’t bright for women’s MMA under Strikeforce’s new ownership.
“You hear everything,” she said. “Alistair, in my opinion, is the top heavyweight fighter in the world, and if they do something like that to him, and you know what they think about the women, yeah, well, it doesn’t make you feel that comfortable and safe.”
She felt something was wrong even before that when she was supposed to attend the event’s pre-fight press conference. She was told to report to the fighter hotel’s lobby at 9:30 a.m. for a 10:00 a.m. shuttle to the media gathering. When she showed up at 9:55, the van had already left.
“We wanted to go with somebody else, and they said, ‘No, no, you don’t have to come any more. It’s already done and you can stay [at the hotel],'” Coenen said. “Really weird to me, because you don’t leave the champion out of the press conference. If you say you will leave at 10 o’clock, you won’t leave at 9:55. That happened throughout the entire week, that kind of stuff.
“It was the fifth time I fought for Strikeforce, and it was the first time I missed a press conference. I’ve never missed anything for Strikeforce or things I had to do for the media.”