UFC Fight Night 104's Bec Rawlings wants refs to back off, says Tecia Torres still hits like a (expletive)
HOUSTON – UFC women’s strawweight Bec Rawlings lauds the promotion for giving women equal opportunities in the promotion. Now, she wants officials to do the same.
“Refs still kind of feel like we’re made of glass because we have vaginas and boobs, which is kind of frustrating,” Rawlings (7-5 MMA, 2-2 UFC), who on Saturday rematches her “The Ultimate Fighter 20” castmate Tecia Torres (7-1 MMA, 3-1 UFC) at UFC Fight Night 104, told MMAjunkie. “In this sport, we’re treated as the most equal out of all the professional sports. We get paid the same, we get the same opportunities, yet we’re still looked at differently inside the cage by referees and judges.”
Rawlings thinks Dan Miragliotta, the referee in her previous fight, – a knockout loss to Paige VanZant at UFC on FOX 21, didn’t give her the chance to recover and fight back after she took a kick to the head.
“It’s no lesson that I haven’t learned previously,” she said. “In my debut fight, I got kicked in the head and I got knocked out cold. I was out for, like, a minute. The only thing frustrating about my last fight was I felt like the ref didn’t give me a chance to fight back.”
The referee was, of course, looking out for her safety. But Rawlings’ counter is that she knows what she signed up for and wants to be given the chance to fight out of bad situations.
It can’t help she’s been at a deficit when she stepped into the cage. Fighting at strawweight, she said she’s dealt with unspecified medical issues trying to make 115 pounds and could fight five times a year if the UFC had a flyweight division. She wasn’t thrilled when the promotion opened a featherweight class instead.
Regulators have repeatedly warned that fighters are more susceptible to brain trauma from extreme weight cutting. So Rawlings could be putting herself in greater danger.
She doesn’t feel jeopardized by her upcoming opponent, however. She said her former “TUF” cast mate is not a knockout threat.
“She still has the same game plan and style,” Rawlings said of Torres, whom she meets on the FS1-televised prelims of Saturday’s event at Toyota Center in Houston. “She’s volume and punches in bunches, still can’t finish a fight to save her life, (and) still hits like a little p—y. She’s a good fighter; I’m not taking that away from her. But I feel like she hasn’t evolved.”
Check out the video above interview for more from Rawlings on her rematch and career.
And for more on UFC Fight Night 104, check out the UFC Rumorssection of the site.
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