After suffering back-to-back losses in her last two outings, “Meatball” Molly McCann is back this weekend (Sat. February 3rd 2024) at UFC Fight Night: Dolidze vs. Imavov. But she almost didn’t return at all. In an interview with UFC.com, McCann admitted she was ready to retire after a quick loss in front of her home country crowd.
“I’ll be deadly serious with you, last fight I was in the changing room and that was me done, the gloves were up,” McCann said. “And we had an evening to drink on it, to eat on it, and then the next day I was still kind of over it. Because you know me, I give my life to this game. It just felt so cruel and unfair in that moment.”
“On the train me coach just said ‘Look, I’ll tell you when enough is enough, I won’t let you get hit, I won’t let you take shots or more shame or embarrassment than you feel you need to take.’ He said, ‘But give me one fight at 115.”
“Meatball” Molly makes her women’s strawweight debut against Diana Belbita. It’s a rematch of their 2019 bout where McCann walked away with a unanimous decision win. The odds have the Liverpudian as a solid favorite, and she needs a win to get her spirits back up after the way U.K. fans turned on her following her loss to Julija Stoliarenko in July 2023.
“I felt like I was at the mercy of the world because of the backlash I received after UFC London,” McCann remembered. “I say this a lot, it was like I’d killed a child the way people was going for me.”
Stoliarenko quickly tapped McCann with an armbar, leading “Meatball” to up her ground game. She’d go on to win her Polaris debut in November 2023 via armbar, and then a British ADCC tournament.
“I just thought ‘What a Molly way to win a professional jiu jitsu match by the submission that I lost by,’ and then go on to win the British ADCC Open through a footlock made me laugh my head off.”
Now McCann feels dialed in mentally and physically for 2024 at 115 pounds.
“As you get older, you learn how to deal with the adversities,” she said. “I’ve been to the moon and back in this game a few times in this game, and through experience, them moments you learn. Lauren Hill, I watched something of hers the other day and she said ‘It’s learning or mastership.’ You’re in these positions where it’s a learning process or you get the mastership of the moment.”
“So. I’ve definitely mastered losing now so it’s enough of that now so I’m gonna master winning as well.”
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
