After replacing Milana Dudieva against Valerie Letourneau during the UFC 174 event, Elizabeth Phillips will have the opportunity to face the person she replaced.
It can be remembered that it was Phillips first fight in the UFC when she replaced and fought against Letourneau on short notice. The result of the fight did not favor Phillips though she believes that if gen ample time, the result would have been much better.
But now that she is passed that, Phillips is now ready to Dudieva inside the octagon. She said "I'm pretty excited. It's a great opportunity. We're the first women's UFC fight ever to fight over in Asia, so that's kind of making history there. I wasn't looking forward to the actual traveling of it, being stuck on a plane for 14-to-16 hours. I would have rather just skipped that. But being in Macau and just experiencing the whole thing is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
But Phillips has quite a predicament in fighting Dudieva. It is because the Russian fighter does not have much footage of her fights which has Phillips thinking what the former's style, strength and weaknesses are. But Phillips welcomes the challenge and thinks that she has seen enough to make it to the octagon.
She said "She doesn't really have one specific style that she's really strong at, from what I've seen. She's kind of average at striking, average at ground, in my opinion. She just looks like a really strong girl. I definitely think I'm more athletic than her, and I think my striking and my ground - which I haven't really been able to show yet, but I'm very comfortable on the ground - are both better than hers, so I think that I'm a better fighter all the way around. She'll be really strong at first, is what I'm thinking."
The timing of the match is also perfect for Phillips as she her workload as a student at Eastern Washington University is not that heavy and she took the time off from her work as a personal trainer.
She said "I was working and going to school all of my professional career, all up until this summer. As soon as I signed with the UFC, I kind of just focused strictly on that, so this is kind of the first summer where I actually get to focus on just fighting. I've never been able to do that before, so it's kind of nice. I was going to school for exercise science, and I still have about 10 credits to go until I'm finished. I'm still trying to figure out how to fit that in here, but I'll get it done pretty soon."
She added "I was working as an athletic trainer and personal trainer at a really well-developed gym here called Chrome Personal Training Center in Spokane. It was a pretty rewarding job."
