Lauren Murphy’s fighting nickname is “Lucky,” but leading up to UFC 266, it seemed like she was living by Murphy’s Law.
Anything that could go wrong did go wrong in the days and weeks leading into her first opportunity to become UFC champ when she was scheduled to face Valentina Shevchenko this past September.
“It was slow but it took so long to get everything right in that camp to beat Valentina. It’s almost impossible,” Murphy said on The Fighter. The Writer. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The amount of s*** that went wrong before that fight was just f****** amazing.
“Before I even got in the Octagon, I was broke. I was broke before I even got in there, and I had to look at why that was. There were a lot of reasons for that, like, good, legit reasons, but to be honest with you, I should not have been in the octagon that night. I just should not have been in the octagon that night.”
It turned out that Murphy had been quite sick in training camp. It was only after she fought that Murphy learned the severity of her condition.
“About four weeks before I fought Valentina, I contracted a bacterial infection in my intestine,” Murphy revealed on Wednesday. “The bacteria’s called clostridioides difficile, but the infection is called C-diff. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t have any experience with it, but if you have a nurse or a doctor or anybody who works in a hospital setting, you can ask them about C-diff and they will know what it is.
“But I didn’t know what it was, so I relied on my team to really walk me through that process. This is the team I have known for many years. These are guys that had advised me in all matters pertaining to my health for the past five fights. Unfortunately, I was not advised correctly on what C-diff was, or how to treat it. I was told you could just take some probiotics, that would fix it; [they said], ‘You don’t need to take antibiotics until after the fight, you’ll be fine, let’s do this.’ Of course, I was like, ‘OK, yeah, let’s do this. Let’s get in the fight. I do not want to lose my chance. .”
According to the Center for Disease Control, C-diff is a germ that causes inflammation of the colon and the severity of the disease, particularly in people 65 and older can actually lead to death. The germ is considered highly contagious, which is another reason Murphy was so irate she didn’t know more about the illness until after the fight.
” “It put me at great risk and it also put Valentina at serious risk,” Murphy stated. It put the athletes who stayed in our hotel that week at great risk. It put the other athletes at the P.I. It put the other athletes at the P.I. in danger, and it’s not okay .
“If I had known that, I would not have come. It’s one thing to say, ‘OK, I’ll get through this and I’ll put my health at risk to fight.’ It is something else to put other people’s health at risk and that’s absolutely not OK.”
Looking back now, Murphy recognizes the danger she faced by competing.
” I should have pulled out of that fight,” she stated. I should have stayed home that night. That week, I shouldn’t have been at the hotel. I shouldn’t have been there with the [Performance Institute] athletes. I wish 100 percent I had withdrawn from that fight.”
Beyond Murphy’s own health issues, her team also took a hit on fight week after her head coach tested positive for COVID-19 and he was forced to return home. Her husband was forced to take over as head coach, and he received a lot of criticism for his advice to Murphy in between rounds.
“I know Joe [Murphy] got heavily criticized for his cornering, but Joe, he was supposed to be in the corner, but he wasn’t really supposed to coach like that, that night,” Murphy said. It seems that I had been broken long before I got into the corner. There were many things wrong .
Murphy is aware that pulling out of the fight would have been a smart decision due to her poor health and her absence from her coach. Murphy was determined to salvage a terrible situation.
” I am the type of person, even though the odds are one to one. So I will f ****** accept those odds,” Murphy stated. “Who knows, maybe, and that’s what I kind of kept telling myself. To be truthful, before I walked into the Octagon that night .”
I was broke.
Despite everything that happened, Murphy still can’t deny what that moment meant to her just for the sheer magnitude of stepping into a UFC title fight.
“In a lot of ways, it was the worst experience of my life,” Murphy explained. “My dream was to go in and fight the best, and give her a good fight, and here I had earned the opportunity to go in and fight the best and I was not able to give her the fight I was capable of, and that’s a living nightmare. It was not what I wanted in front of my family or friends. I didn’t want to get finished for the first time in my career. I didn’t want any of that to happen.
“It was terrible. It was also amazing that I shared the cage with Valentina f Shevchenko. It was an incredible experience. I’ve never experienced that in any other fight that I’ve ever had, and I’ve fought everybody in the top-10, and she’s different. It’s a different experience than any of them. I am proud to have fought someone of such high level in my life, a former addict and high school dropout from an isolated area of the country. It was the coolest f****** thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
Murphy acknowledges that there was a title fight chance, but it wasn’t guaranteed after UFC 266.. She’s personally witnessed other fighters pull out of a title bout only to lose the chance through one circumstance or another, and she never wanted to live with that regret.
“To be fair, nobody forced me to fight that night,” she said. “Nobody forced me to get in there. I made that choice. I chose to fight that night because I wanted to fight the champion. I wanted to fight Valentina Shevchenko. That was what I wanted. I wanted to know what it was like to compete for the f****** title against the best in the world.
“Jojo [Joanne] Calderwood, she was lined up to fight for the title, and then the champion got hurt, and then Jojo could never make her way back. She’s never going to fight for the title now, and every time I see Jojo, she looks like she just got done sucking on a lemon. She’s just bitter. It was not what I wanted to do. I wanted to at least shoot my shot, no matter how s***** it was going to go, and I wanted to share the octagon with one of the greatest fighters that’s ever lived. Even if I had one arm and I was bleeding out of a profuse neck wound, I still wanted to share the cage with the champion.”
Despite the loss that night and the long wait to finish the fight, Murphy is confident she will be back in the ring. At UFC Long Island, she has a golden opportunity in front of her with a showdown against Miesha Tate, who’s making a big splash at 125 pounds after previously reigning as bantamweight champion.
If all goes according to plan, Murphy will return to the chase for Shevchenko’s second chance, and no one is going to stop her from trying.
“When I beat Miesha, I could be right back there in a No. 1 contender’s fight against somebody really tough,” Murphy said. I’m going to have to work really hard for it and then when I beat that person, again, I’m going to prove I’m willing to fight and claw and scrape my way back to the top. I’m not discouraged and I’m not defeated. Although I am aware that Valentina defeated me, I want to win the title. I will need more than one ass kick to prevent me from winning the title.
“I’m tough, I’m going to get back up, I’m going to come back better and I’m going to earn my way back there. I don’t care if everybody in the world f****** doubts me.”
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