“I feel great,” she said. “I haven’t had any problems in my knee the entire camp, so I’m really happy about that. It hasn’t given me any trouble.”
Knock wood for the 32-year-old, who has paid more dues than most to make it to the Octagon for a prizefight. There was the cancer, the injuries, and more injuries on top of those, and let’s not forget that since the last time she competed, there was a global pandemic, while made getting any kind of work in a hassle at best and nearly impossible at worst.
“I had to travel a little bit longer because the person that I was seeing for my neck was in Fullerton, which was maybe 30, 40 minutes from my house,” she said. “But what happened was they closed down all the schools out in California, so I had to go an hour-and-a-half in order to do my physical therapy with traffic. Sometimes I would get there, it’d be an hour-and-a-half to get there. Then I’d have two hours of training and stuff and for my neck and obviously straight training. And then I would travel an hour-and-a-half back.”
UFC’S 30TH ANNIVERSARY EXPERIENCE
Suarez says this in a matter-of-fact manner, like, hey, what can you do? There’s no complaining from someone who has every right to complain, and when you factor in the Octagon time missed for a fighter in her prime who may have well been a champion right now, it’s a wonder that she stuck to the plan for this long.
Why?
“I think when it all comes down to it, I just believe that this is what I was born to do,” Suarez said. “It sounds crazy, obviously, because we’re fighting and stuff, but being an athlete is something that I love to do. And I love training. Me and my boyfriend, after practice, we geek out all the time. We just talk about practice and or MMA, in general. Just the other day, we had a practice, and we were both all excited. We’re like, ‘Oh, that was so much fun.’ And then we’re like, ‘Yeah, we can’t wait for sparring tomorrow.’ It’s just something that we both love to do. It’s our passion.”