Paige VanZant signs with Bare Knuckle FC to banish ‘the stigma in MMA that I’m just a pretty face’
- Former UFC star says she could be done with MMA after agreeing deal worth US$1 million with bare-knuckle boxing promotion
- ‘I could just be making so much money that I don’t do anything else,’ says VanZant, after Dana White told her to ‘definitely test free agency’
Paige VanZant hopes to banish the “stigma in MMA that I’m just a pretty face” after signing with Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship.
“What a way to prove to people that’s not the way I see myself at all,” the 26-year-old former UFC star (8-5) told ESPN’s Ariel Helwani after announcing her deal on Wednesday night.
VanZant famously said last year she makes more money from Instagram – where she has 2.7 million followers – than fighting in the cage, which makes her decision to compete in the Philadelphia-based bare-knuckle boxing promotion intriguing.
“This is a sport where people probably have the highest rate of getting cut open and having long-term scars is definitely something that I’m not even worried about,” she said. “It’s just the love of competition and I’m really excited to go out there and show off in such an amazing sport.”
VanZant’s deal is worth US$1 million, according to ESPN, and she admitted she could be finished with MMA, despite recently relocating to Florida to train with American Top team.
“Right now, my sole focus is boxing,” she said. “But in a few years I could go back to MMA or I could just be making so much doing this bare knuckle boxing that I don’t do anything else.”
The American was submitted by rising Brazilian star Amanda Ribas in the first round of her final bout in the UFC last month on Fight Island in Abu Dhabi, after which UFC president Dana White said she “should definitely test free agency” in comments that upset VanZant.
“It was an amazing contract, an amazing opportunity,” VanZant said of her BKFC deal. “I also feel like it’s not a move backwards for me. It’s a lateral move to a new opportunity, a new challenge, a brand new sport. I really have sparked a brand new passion for it and especially for striking in general.
Bellator MMA had seemed a more natural landing point for “12 Gauge”, whose husband Austin Vanderford (9-0) fights in its middleweight division, and the US promotion’s CEO, Scott Coker, expressed “serious” interest in signing VanZant.
“I talked to a lot of different promotions,” VanZant said. “I actually had no idea that I would have so many come with such big offers. I knew I would get the big players in the game, like Bellator or ONE [Championship].
“But I actually had five or six huge, solid promotions that I had to decide on. At this moment in my career, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship was the one that fit best.”