Going into UFC 317, Tracy Cortez was haunted by her loss against Rose Namajunas.
Cortez’s perfect record inside the Octagon came to a crashing halt around this same time last year when she suffered a unanimous decision defeat against the two-time flyweight titleholder.
Since then, Cortez has bounced back, earning an impressive victory against Viviane Araujo during International Fight Week in Las Vegas. Appearing on The Ariel Helwani Show, Cortez detailed how difficult it was to shake off the ‘Thug’ Rose fight and offered some insight into the advice that finally helped her look to the future instead of focusing on the past.
“I’m my worst critic,” Cortez told Helwani. “It’s just not the way I wanted to win—I wanted to finish. I wanted to set a statement, but I was just listening to my coaches, my cornermen—they’re like, ‘Be patient.’ The game plan was to be patient, because she was fast, she was explosive. So I just stuck to the game plan.”
“That loss… it kind of haunted me. During the camp, I kept telling the coaches, ‘What if this happens in the fight?’ Like, that happened in the Rose fight—you know, certain scenarios. And Santino, he looked me dead in the eyes, he goes, ‘Hey, that’s gone. That doesn’t exist no more. It’s the past—you’re right here, right now.’”
Cortez’s win over Araujo bumped her up two spots in the women’s flyweight division, putting her in the No. 8 spot in the rankings. Inching her way toward the top five, there are plenty of exciting matchups for Cortez’s return to the Octagon. Of course, that’s assuming she can stay healthy long enough to fight more than once per year.
