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New UFC women’s flyweight champ Nicco Montano fought Roxanne Modaferri with broken foot
Filed under: Featured, News, UFC
LAS VEGAS – Nicco Montano went five tough rounds with Roxanne Modafferi to win the inaugural UFC women’s flyweight title.
Just as impressive, she fought through a broken bone in her foot.
“It’s still broken now, technically,” Montano (4-2 MMA, 1-0 UFC) told MMAjunkie backstage after her gutsy decision win over Modaferri (21-14 MMA, 0-2 UFC) in the FS1-televised headliner of The Ultimate Fighter 26 Finale at Park Theater in Las Vegas.
To deal with the pain, Montano got a cortisone shot one day before the event’s weigh-ins. She still gutted out five rounds despite not being able to push off her foot as normal.
It wasn’t the only loop thrown her way. On the day of the event’s weigh-ins, her originally scheduled opponent, Sijara Eubanks, was scratched from the title bout due to a bad weight cut.
Montano, who outpointed three opponents to make the finals, had just sat in the sauna with Eubanks while they shed the last pounds on the way to the scale, anticipating their upcoming opportunity.
The strain of the weight cut left Montano unable to walk after weigh-ins. A rep from the UFC’s Performance Institute had to give her a massage to get mobility back.
“I probably had, like, 10 percent of 100 mobility in my left foot,” she said. “I thought I wasn’t going to be able to fight. It was such an emotional roller coaster. But I told myself, I made it through the ‘TUF’ competition – don’t give up now.”
Modaferri gave Montano everything she could handle. And yet she never tired amid the fight’s frenzied pace.
At 4-2 as a professional, Montano doesn’t expect things to get any easier inside the cage. Outside it, that’s a different story.
Montano walked onto the set of the long-running reality show from a basement apartment in Albuquerque, N.M., where she lives with her boyfriend.
“We were dirt poor just before tonight in all reality,” she said.
With a new UFC belt on her waist, and a $50,000 performance bonus soon to be deposited in her bank, life is about to change.
“I’m going to go move to an apartment with some water pressure, and buy some good food and treats for my cats,” she said.
For complete coverage of The Ultimate Fighter 26 Finale, check out the UFC Events section of the site.
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