Las Vegas, NV — Ahead of UFC Las Vegas, Ariane Lipski made a big change, leaving American Top Team to train alongside double-champ Amanda Nunes, who had made a similar move last year.
The decision paid off for the “Queen of Violence” Lipski (15-8), who returned to flyweight after a one-off fight at 135lbs and picked up a unanimous decision win over JJ Aldrich on Saturday.
Following the fight, Lipski opened up on what led to the move, speaking to media outlets including Cageside Press.
“We moved to the U.S. to look to improve my wrestling, and then we went to American Top Team because of Amanda,” Lipski explained backstage at The Theater at Virgin Hotels. “She’s the champion, I wanted to stay close to her, just to see her training. It’s like, you learn.”
“Then when she left the gym, we were missing her a lot. Nina [Nunes, Amanda’s wife] is someone who really helped me, always helped in my training camps at ATT,” Lipski continued. “I’m really happy for the time I spent training at ATT, but there’s so many coaches, so many fighters, that you have so many influences from all sides— I felt like I needed [things to be] more private, to find myself again, to find my game, to understand ‘okay that works for me, that does not.'”
“And that’s the way Amanda has been working. She opened her gym so me and my head coach, we could train there. It was really great, seeing her train, talking with her, getting to train with her. She was always trying to help with the experiences she had, that she learned by herself, that she tried to teach me. It was really great.”
At 1-3 in her last four prior to UFC Las Vegas, there was some thought that Lipski might have been fighting for his job this weekend — though the Brazilian herself wasn’t so sure. “That was the second fight on my new contract, I don’t know if they would have cut me,” Lipski stated. “I’m a fighter, I would keep fighting, but for sure, I don’t like to— no one likes to lose.”
Watch the full UFC Las Vegas post-fight media appearance by Ariane Lipski above.
