Getting married after a UFC title fight can go one of two ways. The fighter will be very happy with the title and black eye, or the fighter will be very sad without the title and a black eye. Carla Esparza will find out soon.
This weekend, Esparza gets her long-awaited title fight at UFC 274 against Rose Namajunas. It is rematch eight years in the making, as Esparza defeated Namajunas for the inaugural strawweight championship. It has been a wild ride for both fighters with ups and downs, but they will finally meet this weekend.
The following weekend, Esparza gets married.
A big decision
On Monday’s episode of The MMA Hour, Esparza explained how her title fight and wedding became so close together.
“I’ve had this wedding planned for eight or nine months, so it’s been planned well in advance. With the fight, I think found out like two months ago,” Esparza said. “My reaction [when I found out about the fight] was, I have a choice to make, as opposed to if the wedding was a couple of weeks before, I would have been like I would have had to cancel it or if it was the day of the fight it would have been no question, I have to cancel the wedding.”
“But with this, it was like now you have a choice. You can potentially go into a wedding with a nice belt and a black eye or you know, tore up. It was a big decision to make but fortunately my fiancee helped me come to the conclusion to keep [the date]. He was like ‘I love you no matter what, black eyes and all. Everyone coming to the wedding, know what’s up and they won’t be like ‘that’s weird, where did that black eye come from?'”
Esparza had support
Esparza said she was very stressed out about the decision, but it was her fiancee that was the one to really help solidify the decision.
“I went to him and I was like ‘I feel really stressed about this decision..because how I can go into the wedding. I want to feel beautiful, I want to look beautiful.’ He was like ‘look, when I asked you to marry me I knew what I was getting myself into asking a fighter to marry me. You’re beautiful no matter what. we’re just committing to each other so that is all that matters and I support whatever decision you want to make.’ To me that solidified it. If he can see me as beautiful no matter what, that’s all that really matters,” Esparza said.
Esparza vs. Namajunas II goes down this Saturday in Phoenix, AZ and MiddleEasy will be on-site for all of the coverage.
