Liz
Carmouche’s resume lacks only a major mixed martial arts
title.
The
Strikeforce,
Ultimate Fighting Championship and
Invicta Fighting Championships veteran will challenge the
unbeaten
Juliana
Velasquez for the
Bellator
MMA women’s flyweight crown in the
Bellator 278 headliner on Friday at the Neil S. Blaisdell
Center in Honolulu. Carmouche, 38, rides a three-fight winning
streak into the five-round main event. She last competed at
Bellator 261, where she routed
Kana
Watanabe with punches a mere 35 seconds into their June 25
encounter.
As Carmouche approaches her high-stakes battle with Velasquez, a
look at some of the rivalries that have helped shape her career to
this point:
“Rumina” survived a significant scare from the previously
undefeated Carmouche and retained her women’s bantamweight
championship when she submitted the former Marine with a triangle
choke in the fourth round of their Strikeforce “Feijao vs.
Henderson” co-main event on March 5, 2011 at Nationwide Arena in
Columbus, Ohio. Coenen sealed the deal 1:29 into Round 4, and with
that, a dramatic comeback was hers. Carmouche bullied the Golden
Glory standout for much of the matchup. A late replacement for the
injured
Miesha Tate,
she took down, mounted and punished the seasoned titleholder with
ground-and-pound in the second and third rounds. Coenen looked
uncharacteristically out of sorts off her back, as the challenger
twice moved into a high mounted position and unleashed relentless
volleys of punches and hammerfists. Her right eye visibly swollen,
Coenen again had to fight from her back in the fourth round. This
time, however, she turned the tide in her favor. She trapped
Carmouche in full guard, snaked her legs around the challenger’s
neck, tightened the triangle choke and waited for the tapout.
Carmouche fought to free herself, but with no means of escape,
surrender became her only option. A reluctant tapout followed.
Carmouche put the then-Ultimate Fighting Championship women’s
bantamweight titleholder in serious trouble for the first time in
her career before succumbing to what most viewed as inevitable: a
first-round armbar in their historic UFC 157 headliner on Feb. 23,
2013 at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. Rousey elicited
the tapout 4:49 into Round 1, bringing a decisive close to the
first women’s bout in UFC history. Her latest triumph was easily
her most difficult. Carmouche capitalized on the judoka’s trademark
aggression, moved to her back a little more than a minute into the
fight and went to work on a submission of her own, first with a
standing rear-naked choke and then with a neck crank. Rousey was in
visible distress but fought through the pain and panic to free
herself from Carmouche’s clutches. The onetime Olympic bronze
medalist powered into top position and methodically softened
Carmouche for her patented maneuver. The challenger tried
desperately to escape, but Rousey was relentless in her pursuit of
the finish and finally isolated the arm after an extended
struggle.
Team Hurricane Awesome’s Carmouche dispatched the Brazilian
powerhouse with heavy ground-and-pound in the second round of their
UFC on Fox 8 women’s bantamweight showcase on July 27, 2013 at
KeyArena in Seattle. Andrade checked out 3:57 into Round 2. Five
months after she failed in her bid to capture UFC gold at 135
pounds, Carmouche was in prime form. The Lafayette, Louisiana,
native struck for multiple takedowns and weathered an attempted
guillotine choke from Andrade in the first round. In the second,
Carmouche delivered another takedown, passed to side control,
mounted the Parana Vale Tudo export and threatened her with a
rear-naked choke before unleashing her ground-and-pound.
Transitioning between back control and full mount, Carmouche
dropped heavy punches and sharp elbows with authority, ultimately
forcing the stoppage with an accumulation of blows.
The Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt moved to 2-0 in her head-to-head
series with Carmouche when she eked out a split decision in their
UFC Fight Night 123 rematch on Dec. 9, 2017 at the Save Mart Center
in Fresno, California. All three cageside judges scored it 29-28:
Jason
McCoy for Carmouche, Derek Cleary and Ron McCarthy for Davis.
It was competitive from start to finish. Davis—who had also
outpointed the Louisiana native at UFC Fight Night 31 in November
2013—threatened with a tight armbar in the first round and tripped
her counterpart to the canvas in the second, using her
ground-and-pound to pass guard and chew up clock. Carmouche was at
her best in the standup exchanges—she raised a grotesque swelling
on the left side of the Canadian’s face—and had Davis reeling in
the third round, where she cut loose with both hands before
shooting on a puzzling takedown. Davis answered with another armbar
and later swept into top position, closing the door on the favored
Team Hurricane Awesome representative.
“Bullet” showed no signs of weakness and dominated in all phases
when she laid claim to a lopsided unanimous decision against
Carmouche to retain her flyweight title in the UFC Fight Night 156
headliner on Aug. 10, 2019 at Antel Arena in Montevideo, Uruguay.
All three cageside judges arrived at the same verdict: 50-45 for
the incomparable Shevchenko, who avenged a September 2010 defeat to
the “Girl-Rilla” and evened their rivalry at 1-1. Carmouche did not
stand much of a chance and looked like a fighter who was in touch
with reality. Her passivity played right into Shevchenko’s hands,
as the champion tore into her with leg kicks, front kicks to the
body, lightning-quick punching bursts and even a few spinning
backfists. She also handled Carmouche on the ground, where she
stymied the Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt in top position across
significant chunks of time and made her all-terrain supremacy
known.
Carmouche dazzled in her Bellator MMA debut, as she submitted
“Vitamin D” with a rear-naked choke in the in the third round of
their featured Bellator 246 pairing on Sept. 12, 2020 at the
Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut. Bennett—who was five
pounds overweight for the flyweight match—bowed out 3:17 into Round
3. The two women took turns at the reins throughout the first 10
minutes of a grappling-centric confrontation. Carmouche countered a
takedown in the third round, wheeled behind the Killer B Combat
Sports rep and jumped to the back. Before Bennett realized the
peril at hand, the choke was in place. Carmouche cut off all
avenues of escape as they collapsed to the canvas and prompted the
tapout. It was her first successfully executed submission in more
than eight years and established her as an immediate player at 125
pounds.