Canada’s Sarah Moras will be in action at the re-booked, re-located UFC 249 card later this month. That card will see Moras take on Ultimate Fighter alum Sijara Eubanks in bantamweight action. “Cheesecake” will be the lone Canadian on the card.
“It looks like it’s actually happening, so I’m excited,” Moras told us, just a day after the bout, and entirely new card, was announced.
“They told me like three weeks ago, or two weeks ago, to get my medicals done,” said Moras. “This whole time they’ve said that the fight’s still happening, that it won’t be in New York but it’s happening still. I’ve just been preparing like I’m fighting, regardless of knowing a location or not.”
Of course, the change in locations — reportedly to California, on tribal land — is because of the coronavirus. With much of the globe on lockdown, however, being able to train gives Moras something positive to focus on. “It kind of keeps me a little sane too, because with all this [COVID-19 pandemic] going on, your mind can wander a bit,” she observed.
Unlike some fights on the card, Moras was already scheduled to face Eubanks. It’s only the location that has changed for her. And her preparation, of course. Gone is going to a gym full of training partners.
“It’s definitely more difficult. It kind of reminds me when I started training. I trained in the garage,” said Moras. “Luckily we had some mats in our spare room, so we moved them into the living room so we had a bit more space.”
Her boyfriend is one of her main training partners, as they’re both roughly the same size. “We really lucked out with this situation.”
The pair live together, with no one else in the household. They’ll be able to travel to the event together. “So that makes it easy.” And as an added bonus, the event is staying in the States. For a while, word was it would be relocated, perhaps to Dubai. Maybe Russia. “I’m also really excited that now it’s in the U.S., whereas before, it looked like it was overseas,” Moras explained, adding that “with me being Canadian, living in the U.S. on a work visa, it made me skeptical about being able to actually come back into the country. Now that I don’t have to leave the country, it’s a pretty big relief.”
In fact, before the fight was confirmed, the bantamweight considered moving back to the Great White North. “We were debating going back or not, but we weren’t sure where the fight was going to be or if the fight was going to happen. We were just waiting to hear.”
While Moras said it’s “pretty sweet” that the bout is moving forward, “if it wasn’t going to happen, I was thinking of going to Canada, because at least in Canada, I can work if I can’t fight. Whereas here, I can’t work if I can’t fight,” she told us. That’s a side effect of the work visa. “So it was a bit stressful. But right now, it looks like the fight is going through, it looks like I’m going to get paid. I don’t really want to leave Vegas, but sometimes what you’ve got to do what you don’t want to do.”
The fight being on means no quarantine snacks, said Moras. “It’s been good, my weight’s been great, everything’s been really good. I really lucked out, with where I was at when this all started. I was in a really good place.”
With no injuries, it’s a pretty good situation, she said. Moras, who isn’t much of a gamer, is trying her hand at gardening in her spare time. But it’s the fight that is the main focus right now. “I’m excited. I hope we can stay safe with it. I know it’s pretty f*cking crazy right now. I’m healthy going into the fight. Usually when I’m pretty healthy going in, I come out pretty healthy too. So that’s a positive. I guess it’s just one of those things, you hope things just line up the way you want them to line up, and everything goes smoothly.”
Yet the looming cloud that is a global pandemic is also not lost on Sarah Moras. “There’s a lot going on. It’s not just in the U.S., it’s all over the world. It should be taken seriously. So I’m doing the best I can. Training at home, staying away form everyone, only going out for groceries. Today was actually the first day we went to the gym, no one else there. We cleaned everything before we touched it, and we cleaned everything after we were done.”
“Trying to keep it as safe as I can and still get the work in that I need to get in,” is how she ultimately put it.
Watch our full interview with UFC 249’s Sarah Moras below!
