VanZant: Not going on TUF bittersweet
Piage VanZant recently spoke to Ariel Helwani on the MMA Hour about how everything around her UFC contract transpired and her outlook on the situation.
Straw weight fighter Paige VanZant was all but a lock to be a member of the upcoming season of the Ultimate Fighter featuring all women. That is of course until producers realized she was only twenty years old, and athletes are required to be twenty-one or older. VanZant recently spoke to Ariel Helwani on the MMA Hour about how everything transpired and her outlook on the situation:
It was a concern for me. I didn’t know if they made a mistake or not. I went to the bantamweight tryouts just to be with teammates and help them out. I saw that one of the stipulations was that you had to be 21, and then, actually Dana White called me and said that I was on the show. I wasn’t going to second guess him, I was completely in shock. I was excited. I knew it might come up and it was terrible that it did. But I ended up getting a UFC contract anyways, so all in all, it worked out pretty good for me. They called and and said, ‘you’re not on the show, sorry, but you still get the contract’. So it was kind of bittersweet for me. I don’t have the experience of going in the house and I don’t get to work with those coaches. But then again, I don’t have to go into the house and put up with 15 girls all cutting weight at the same time.”