MONCTON, Canada – Paige VanZant hasn’t fought since Jan. 14, when a fight with Jessica-Rose Clark left her dealing with not only a loss, but an unexpectedly complicated injury.

VanZant’s husband, Austin Vanderford, has fought twice in the meantime – including a Dana White’s Contender Series 13 bout that he won via submission. VanZant was there, helping him through the weight cut and experiencing first-hand the nerves that her own family and friends go through when they watch her fight.

There’s no such thing as fighting vicariously through someone else, though. And accompanying Vanderford as he goes into fight mode, it turns out, doesn’t do much to help VanZant (7-4 MMA, 4-3 UFC) scratch her itch to do the same.

“It makes me really jealous,” VanZant told MMAjunkie playfully, while sitting next to Vanderford. “I have a lot of built-up energy and aggression right now, so he gets to take all of that. It’s really fun.”

It certainly hasn’t been a smooth road to recovery for VanZant. After breaking her arm in the unanimous-decision loss to Clark, “12 Gauge” had  surgery in January. Complications from that, though, led to her needing a second surgery in July. The four-hour procedure involved taking bone fragments from her hip and placing them on the arm.

This isn’t VanZant’s first time having to step away from the octagon. In 2016, she took a break in order to compete on “Dancing with the Stars,” which she finished as a runner-up. But the nature of her current layoff, understandably, has made it the hardest one yet.

“This one was different because it wasn’t by choice,” VanZant said. “And having something this important taken away from you. And be told that you kind of just have to sit and watch is awful. And what made it even worse is I kind of anticipated like a typical surgery and a typical timeline for that. I thought I would be back training in eight weeks, and it’s been nine months.

“And two surgeries and then hip surgery that will help, like, fix the arm. So it’s been a very long process that I didn’t anticipate having to go through.”

The good news is that VanZant just cleared to get back into training last Thursday. She and Vanderford have been doing crossfit workouts and working on getting her conditioning back, and hopefully next month she’ll be cleared to go into full-on training, including striking.

As she awaits, the UFC women’s flyweight division has experienced some interesting times. Its original champion, Nicco Montano, was stripped of the belt after a bad weight cut kept her from meeting Valentina Schevchenko in what would be her first defense. Schevchenko is now set to fight for the vacant belt against former strawweight champ Joanna Jedrzejczyk at UFC 231.

It’s been hard for VanZant to watch from the sidelines as so many of her fellow fighters move on with their careers, but she’s still trying to find some type of silver lining to the situation.

“The only thing is, I feel bad for whoever spars with me the first time,” VanZant said. “Because I have a lot of anger built up. I definitely – I guess it’s made me, like, really hungry to get back in the cage. Which I feel I’ve always had that. So I’m trying to look at the bright side. I really am, but it’s just kind of been a bummer.”

As someone who was there for it all, Vanderford can attest to how hard it’s been for VanZant. No stranger to injuries himself, Vanderford also believes there’s something to be said for perspective.

“Kind of going off what she said, it shows you that this is so important to you, and that you want this so much,” Vanderford said. “And I think it has shown that for her. It’s been super difficult, for sure. So anyone who thinks any differently about whether she wants to fight or not, I can tell you first hand that she’s 100 percent into it.

“She’s faced trying to come back too early and metering to tell her that you’ve just got to – because I’ve been through injuries myself, through wrestling, my whole career and all that, and I know that it takes patience. A lot of times, as athletes, we aren’t the most patient.

“We want to keep moving forward, and we think that, as long as we’re training, we’re getting better. But in reality, sometimes, it’s doing the opposite. I know she really wants it, and she wants to be ready.”

To hear VanZant and Vanderford’s entire sitdown interview with MMAjunkie’s Mike Bohn, watch the video above.

And for more on the UFC schedule, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.