LAS VEGAS – Whatever bad blood was going on between [autotag]Norma Dumont[/autotag] and Chelsea Chandler, Dumont may have put an end to it Saturday.
Dumont (10-2 MMA, 6-2 UFC) turned in a dominant performance to sweep Chandler (5-2 MMA, 1-1 UFC) on the scorecards for a unanimous decision on the main card at UFC on ESPN 49 in Las Vegas. The bout was just the 29th women’s featherweight fight in UFC history.
Amanda Nunes’ recent retirement while she held both the women’s featherweight and bantamweight belts has thrown some chaos into the title pictures in both divisions. Dumont appeared to have taken another big step forward as a contender and said she wants to fight for the vacant belt.
But the big talk right after her win was the Friday backstage altercation between Dumont and Chandler after their ceremonial weigh-in faceoff.
“She reached out to me on Instagram before when she started in the UFC,” Dumont said at her post-fight news conference at the UFC Apex. “We talked. We chatted a bit and we even tried to get a fight together to fight each other, but the UFC didn’t want it at that time – saying that she didn’t have the level to actually fight me at that time. And then she even asked me for some tips. Then all of a sudden, this fight was scheduled and she started saying some things such as, ‘I don’t think (her past) opponents did what they needed to do. I don’t think people put pressure on her. I don’t think people did enough’ – that I wasn’t everything that people thought I was.
“We’re doing weigh-ins. She would look looking down when I talked to her, when I looked over to her. I just went up there and said, ‘Listen, if you’re going to talk, let’s do this. You can’t talk and not back it up.'”
Dumont, from Brazil, said the spat didn’t make a difference to her come fight night, though. And true to that, she appeared to fight without a lot of the emotion that came with the previous day’s run-in, in which both fighters were shown on video being held back from each other.
“Frankly, it doesn’t make a difference,” she said. “I always told people it doesn’t matter to me. I’ve always said all those people from outside Brazil, they wouldn’t even step foot into the climate that we actually have down there, all the stuff that we do. It’s always the war, always the tension, always the brawl. That’s what it’s like, and it doesn’t matter. When I get in there, it doesn’t matter if it’s a friend or a foe. I’m there to hurt. I’m there to strike. I’m there to do everything I can.”
Now Dumont will hope the UFC has reason to keep women’s featherweight around without Nunes ruling it the division. There have been rumors for years that the promotion would ditch the weight class eventually because it’s been a challenge to keep it populated with enough roster members to have frequent contenders.
Without Nunes, the rumors started to ramp up. But Dumont said if the UFC takes away 145, she’ll just bounce down 10 pounds.
“I’m here in the 145 division. I’m here to be the cage at 145, or at 135,” she said. “If Ronda (Rousey) comes back, I’ll go to any division she’s in. I think it would be, simply, the fight of my life since we don’t have Amanda active at the moment.”
Check out Dumont’s complete post-fight interview in the video above.
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC on ESPN 49.