Edmonton — Canada’s Jamey-Lyn Horth opened the UFC Edmonton card on Saturday with a split decision victory over Ivana Petrovic, and from the get-go, her cheering section was loud and boisterous.
The “Let’s go Jamey!” chants could be heard throughout the arena and carried significant volume despite the flyweight bout being the preliminary card-opener.
“It’s frickin’ amazing. Obviously I’m proud to be Canadian, super-fortunate, grateful, and happy and honored to be here with the UFC,” Horth (7-1) told media outlets including Cageside Press following the fight, noting that the promotion gave her “the opportunity to fight here in what I consider to be my back yard.”
Being in her own back yard, or well one province over from her hometown of Squamish, B.C., allowed Horth to bring in the troops.
“I come from a large family and I come from a small town which has been my driving force behind my career, and everything I’ve done growing up in that town as a child is through sport. So I think if I’m not incorrect, probably around 60 to 75 people from Squamish are here tonight,” she revealed.
With the victory against Petrovic, Horth now sits at 2-1 inside the octagon. Despite coming into the fight off a loss to Veronica Hardy, the Canadian didn’t put too much pressure on herself to turn things around. Instead, she took steps to work on her mental game.
“I don’t feel like I did put a lot of pressure on myself and that. I just sort of took that loss and I sat in my own feelings for a few weeks, and then I came back and thought ‘you know what, I’m going to apply myself differently mentally’ going into this next fight camp,” Horth told Cageside Press. “I feel like that sort of paid off for me. I feel like I have a really good coaching staff behind us here, and I knew that they weren’t going to let me down and that they were going to prepare me in every way possible to never have that experience— obviously it’s a possibility but to not have that experience tonight here on home soil.”
Watch the full UFC Edmonton post-fight press conference appearance by Jamey-Lyn Horth above.
