‘Ais the Bash’ Daly pulled no punches when it came to how much her training in the TUF house paled in comparison to what she is used to under the watchful eye of John Kavanagh and Co at Ireland’s now infamous SBG facility on the Naas Road.
Having exited the UFC’s reality competition after Jessica Penne saw out a decision win over her in the quarterfinals, Daly finally got to return to her home away from home in preparation for Alex Chambers, who she would meet on the under card of the TUF Finale on December 12.
“It was great to be at home with the guys in SBG, the training in the house wasn’t great at all,” said Daly. “A lot of the girls are little princesses, lazy bitches, they don’t want to train. It was a different mentality with them and I don’t know how any of them are any good based on how little they train.
“We had coaches, but they’re not your real coaches so they don’t really care. It was just weird training in the house. It literally felt like I took six weeks off and I just did cardio just to keep up. I usually show up for jiu jitsu at home and we do whatever technique we’re doing. When we go to roll we might do ten rounds straight whereas in the house you’d be lucky if you got three rounds of rolling in.
“Half of the time it was because of the girls, if you were anywhere near them in the bracket they didn’t want to roll with you. If they didn’t like you they didn’t want to roll with you, so you were really running low on people to train with all the time we were in there.
“To be back with my team and my family, training with guys like Paddy Holohan and Dylan Tuke and those guys – they’re my team and they look after me. They bash me regularly and give me all the training that I want – it was just so good to be home getting ready for this fight.”
Daly insisted that the difference between her readiness for fights in the house and how she feels before her other fights was quite notable. The Irish starlet claimed that while filming the series she was only 10 per cent ready for battle compared to her previous outings.
She explained: “It just felt worlds apart from where I usually am – I was about 10 per cent fight ready in the house. It was that bad, the whole atmosphere. There’s no support, they’re not your real team and you feel like you’re preparing by yourself. When you’re cut off from the outside world you can’t just text your team mates and tell them you’re having a rough day or you’re struggling with a certain technique. It was rough.”
Irish MMA fans got a big shock when Daly weighed in for the fight. Clearly drawn out before she hit the scales, when “118 pounds” rang out around the venue it was clear what was troubling her. Two pounds off the 116 lbs straw weight limit, Daly outlined how she endured her biggest weight cut to date leading up to the bout and how until a doctor told her to stop cutting, she was determined to make the weight.
“I only realised on the morning that I wasn’t going to make it. In the five days leading up to it I felt I was two pounds slower than I normally would be – that’s basically how it was working out. All my little cutting tricks, they just weren’t working for me. Things that would usually get a two pounds off me just weren’t working. I was aware that I’d have more of a water cut than I’m used to.
“I wouldn’t say I was confident of making the weight because I woke up on the morning of the weigh-in with about ten pounds to lose as opposed to the three and half or four pounds that I usually have to lose. It just wouldn’t shift for me that day, I don’t know what went wrong for that week. What I do know is that I’ll have to start my cut a week or two further out in future because I didn’t allow for any changes in my body.
“I’m getting a bit older and my metabolism is getting a little bit slower than it used to be. Being in the house has literally crashed my metabolism because I was walking around for six or seven weeks trying to keep as close to 115 as possible.
“There were a few other things during the fight camp. I never really do a fight camp as such, I usually just train straight through my different fights. This time it worked out that I kind of just had nine weeks solid to get ready and I’m not used to that – usually it’s just constant – and before this fight I was heavier than I have ever been before a fight.
“I didn’t make allowances for those type of things, I just thought I’d keep training and it would all come off. And it did, it was going grand for a while but when I got to the last few pounds – 130 and below – it just got really hard.
“That’s the one get out of jail free card I’ll get for that. You mess that kind of thing up once and then you never do it again. You learn from your mistakes. Including the fights in the house that was number 22 or 23 and that’s the first time it ever happened. I know it will never happen again, I don’t make a habit of doing these things.
“I was at 118 and I went in to do the medical with the doctor. He basically told me that my heart rate was through the roof and he said ‘you’re dry, we’re not going to get any more out of you.’ I’m kind of glad he told me to stop because I was so determined to make it that I just thought I’d go in and talk to him and I’d get back out and cut the rest in the last two hours.
“Because I was within two pounds of the weight limit (116 lbs) I was still under contract. I was fined but I didn’t lose the fight. If I had of been any heavier, potentially Alex wouldn’t have had to take the fight. I was 118 so she had no choice but to fight me.”
Daly also discussed how the weight cut affected her in her bout with Chambers. Running on depleted energy, the former NAAFS champion knew it would have to be an early finish to guarantee herself victory:
“I kept it to myself, I didn’t say much to my team because I didn’t want to be stressing them about it, but I knew if I didn’t get a finish things could get tough later on. We had worked on a lot of stuff in the lead up to my fight. We worked a lot on my striking and I thought there was potential there for me to get a knockout or a TKO.
“Obviously I’ve got good jiu jitsu, that’s my background so when I was put under pressure I just went back to what I know. I trained with Alex before in the house and I knew I had better grappling than her. When I rolled with her we’d have them rounds where I’d tap her a few times, so I was fairly confident that if I went in and took her down it would all work out.
“Paddy asked me after it ‘what the hell happened, you’re not that easy to take down and you just sort of fell over.’ I let her have the takedown because I thought I would armbar her off it straight away, which I nearly did. It seemed easier rather than having to wrestle her and take her down, but I ended up on top anyway so it didn’t really matter.
“I definitely would’ve been able to come out for the second had it gone that far, but I wouldn’t have been ready for a war. In a lot of my fights I’ve had to go crazy from round one right through to the end and I just didn’t feel like I had that on me.”
Claiming her fifth career finish by armbar seven seconds shy of end of the first round, Daly recalled how she knew that certain finish was on the cards and how confident she is with that particular submission:
“I’ve always felt super comfortable with armbars, it’s like I can smell them. It’s just my thing, Paddy has his triangles and I have my armbars. I just knew she was kind of flaily – I could just see arms everywhere. I knew I could get the armbar, if it wasn’t the first it would have been the second.
“I just didn’t feel like my reflexes were there on the feet. Even when we were doing some slipping drills in the warm-up, I was nearly slipping into punches rather than slipping away from them. That’s how I felt in the fight, she caught me a few times with leg kicks and I knew I just wasn’t reacting properly. My head movement was gone and my footwork was gone. I just thought feck it, I’ll make it a grappling match.”
@PetesyCarroll
My TUF Experience Part 1 ¦ Part 2
To read our interview with Aisling Daly on her career going forward after the Chambers bout, hit this link.
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