Lauren Murphy might have been on the receiving end of a very one-sided beating against Valentina Shevchenko, but she won’t let UFC commentator Daniel Cormier get away with criticizing her corner man.
During the fight, Cormier questioned her corner’s approach, giving her pure positivity in between rounds where Murphy was dominated by her opponent. Lauren Murphy told MMAFighting.com that her corner was missing a major piece, however, which should not be taken out of consideration when evaluating her performance.
Lauren Murphy Fires Back at Daniel Cormier Corner Critcism
When her head coach tested positive for COVID-19 just days from the fight, she had to make some serious decisions about the title bout. Although she ultimately decided to fight, she knows that her corner situation could have been different.
“I’m really comfortable in the corner asking Alex questions that I was wondering about and I just felt bad that ‘DC,’ I guess, got on Joe’s case so bad — and I haven’t watched the fight back or heard what he said, but a couple of people messaged us and called us saying he was ragging on Joe.
I felt bad about it because DC didn’t realize I only had three corners in there that night, he didn’t realize our fourth guy was gone, the head guy, the sounding board for what was going on. Suddenly, we lost a major leg to the table, the support for this fight, so Joe was trying to do two jobs.”
Murphy continued, explaining that her team simply didn’t want her getting discouraged midway through the fight. “Joe knows that one of the things I like about having [head coach] Alex there is that he stays calm in the corner. He doesn’t get all f*ckin’ riled up, he stays real calm and I think Joe was trying to emulate that.
DC doesn’t know that though. Joe was probably trying to keep me from being discouraged, and it’s easy with a fighter like Valentina to get really discouraged and, truth be told, I was discouraged with the stuff with my coach, that first exchange where it was like, ‘I can’t take too many of those f*cking strikes,’ which made me timid.
In the second round I put her on the cage and I couldn’t move her at all, I couldn’t move her legs and my confidence was just getting chipped away.
I think Joe was just trying to, in that moment, make sure my confidence wasn’t totally blown out. That was a big hurdle that we had. I tried to overcome it, I tried to tell myself this is the kind of stress champions deal with, and it was tough.”
Do you think Lauren Murphy’s corner should have been more realistic with her during the fight, or were they right to try and keep her spirits up? Let us know in the comments.
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