Liz Carmouche was in serious dangerous of losing her flyweight belt as the Bellator 294 main event headed into the championship rounds.
That’s when the Team Hurrican Awesome product found another gear, as she rallied to submit DeAnna Bennett with an arm-triangle choke at the 4:29 mark of Round 4 on Friday night at the Neil S. Blaisdell Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. Carmouche was down 3-0 on the scorecards before the finish, and though her opponent missed weight, the champion had agreed to vacate the flyweight title in defeat. Instead, she extended her Bellator MMA winning streak to six.
“I dug deep in myself. I’m not a quitter,” Carmouche said at the Bellator 294 post-fight press conference. “I’m gonna show them what it means to be a Marine. No matter what it takes, no matter how hard it gets, you get it done. I could see she was getting tired. My coach was like, ‘That’s it. You’ve given her three, now finish it and get it done.’ Once I got her close, I could feel her energy level dying down.”
Bennett has a history of trouble on the scales when she faces Carmouche. Prior to their meeting at Bellator 246, Bennett tipped the scales 5.7 pounds above the flyweight limit. This time, the Invicta Fighting Championships veteran was 1.2 pounds heavy, making her ineligible to win the title. Carmouche was clearly annoyed by her adversary’s inability to make weight.
“She, just like her previous fights, was like, ‘I’m so sorry, I just didn’t make weight.’ Those excuses don’t fly,” Carmouche said. “I stay up until 11:00 at night cutting the weight, then I wake up at 5:00 to double and triple check. We’re professionals in this sport, and we’re in one of the biggest organizations in the sport, so we need to do everything the best way possible. She said she had nothing but respect for me. To me, if you don’t make weight, you don’t respect your opponent.”
Because Bennett didn’t make weight, Carmouche believes that allowed her to enjoy some success in the early portion of their rematch. Even then, the former UFC title challenger was able to persevere through adversity.
“I definitely didn’t want any dominance on her part, but she didn’t struggle to miss weight. She still didn’t make the weight, and I could feel that in the beginning,” Carmouche said. “She had success early, but she still didn’t have the gas tank at the end… if you watch her, every time she had to walk back up to the scale — if you have the energy to make a face, you have the energy to stay in the sauna. Her claim to fame in this sport is missing weight. You don’t deserve to have the belt. Now, if she had the same performance while making weight, I would be giving her props. She cheated, yet again. If I outweighed somebody and didn’t have to cut weight, I would do pretty well on top, too.”
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