Touted prospect Alice Pereira admits ‘apathetic’ reaction to debut loss, building ‘mental shield’ for UFC Vegas 115 return

Alice Pereira wanted to become the youngest women to sign with the UFC , joining the promotion just days after turning 19, but ultimately lost a decision to Montserrat Rendon in her debut. She’s back seven months later to face off against Hailey Cowan at UFC Vegas 115, which goes down April 4 at the Meta APEX, and has mixed feelings about her first night as a UFC fighter. At the same time she lamented not winning her first UFC appearance after so much hype and expectation, “Golden Girl” admits feeling weird by how apathetic she was in tasting defeat for the first time in six professional MMA bouts.

“To be honest, at that moment when my hand wasn’t raised, I wasn’t sad,” Pereira told MMA Fighting. “I didn’t leave with the feeling that I had a terrible fight or that I didn’t do my job right. To this day, I don’t know if that was good or bad because I stayed apathetic about my fight for a long time.

I didn’t have a bad feeling about it because, to me, I had done a good job. “I could have been a bit more aggressive, yes, but it’s very easy to say that when you watch it back. When we put together the game plan and the strategy, we go in there ready to follow it to a T, and I didn’t want to give Rendon any opening to take me down.

I defended all the takedowns. Maybe that was even part of it. I might have been so focused on defending her takedowns that I held back some of my usual aggressiveness, which is what I was missing a bit to even things out.