Flyweight Lauren Murphy, picking up a TKO finish of Mara Romero Borella at UFC Newark, is looking to make her money while she can.
Newark, NJ — Lauren Murphy has had her share of struggles in the past year. Injury. Surgery. A manager pilfering her profits. Through all of that, she has held steady, and showed true perseverance by returning to the octagon at UFC Newark to finish Mara Romero Borella via TKO.
The end came in the third round of the preliminary card fight, and was Murphy’s first stoppage in the UFC’s flyweight division, which she joined after an appearance on The Ultimate Fighter 26. That stint was something of a unique one, given Murphy was already a contracted UFC fighter, albeit in the bantamweight division.
In any case, Murphy was back in the win column on Saturday, improving to 2-1 as a flyweight. The win comes after something of a layoff, as a January fight fell through due to complications from a previous injury.
“Honestly the layoff doesn’t bother me much. It’s more important to come in healthy I think,” Murphy told reporters including Cageside Press post-fight at the Prudential Center on Saturday. “Honestly I never stopped training. If I had not trained for nine months and then come to fight, I think that would be different. But I was training the whole time I was out.”
The key was “just coming in and having a good performance. That was the main goal, was just to relax. Control my breathing, control my emotions. Be in control of my mind. We knew that would lead to a good performance.”
She got just that, with a late finish of a tough opponent. “Everybody knows I love ground n’ pound. All my finishes are TKO finishes,” Murphy pointed out. “I think I have nine of them now or something like that. We were just talking about, I’m just now really learning how to use the power in my hands.” In short, she’s working on evolving her skill set. “I have a lot of power in my punches. It used to be I just take them down and knock them out on the ground. But now I’m really learning how to throw my hands. Next is going to be my legs. Next thing we’re going to work on is making my kicks just as powerful as my hands, just as powerful as my takedowns.”
Now, Murphy will look to find some consistency, as she looks to be the best Lauren she can be. And it could come against one of a couple of fighters she called out post-fight, mainly Roxanne Modafferi and Alexis Davis.
As to when that might be, “next week is fine with me,” she joked. “No, really whenever. I really meant it, I’m trying to make some money. I want paycheck after paycheck. I really want to experience as much as I can while I can.”
“We’re here for a good time, not for a long time,” Murphy said, throwing out a popular quote these days. “Today was a really good day. Losses are super heartbreaking in this sport. It just as easily could be me in the locker room crying right now, wishing that I’d done something a little bit different, and wanting these moments back. Thank God it’s not me tonight. I’ve lost before, I will lose again at some point, hopefully I’ll win again at some point. I want to have all these experiences while I can.”
“One day, I’m going to be sixty years old, buying my ticket to sit in the crowd,” she continued, “reminiscing about the days I got to be in the cage, and wishing I could go back. So I don’t want to waste this time, or waste this gift that I have. It’s pretty important.”
Watch the full UFC Newark post-fight press scrum with Lauren Murphy above!
