Canada has always been a hot bed for MMA. However, despite it’s long and storied history of legendary fighters, there is still not a huge concerntration of MMA fighters in certain parts of the country. That’s particularly true for the Western part of the country and even more so when you’re looking at female fighters. For those reasons, the team of Jamey-Lyn Horth pushed her to get out and travel a bit after her last fight.
“My team wanted me to just sort of get out of my comfort zone and head elsewhere and spend some time sort of just immersing myself in a different schedule and a different sort of style,” she explained. “Each gym sort of has a little bit of the way they do things differently and a little bit of a style. So I had the opportunity to go out and head out to Niagara Top Team and train with Jasmine [Jasudavicius] with her lead up to her fight that she had here in Vancouver against Manon [Fiorot].”
That high level training and different lifestyle helped Horth progress leading up to her fight at UFC Vegas 112. However, Jasudavicius was far from her first look at a UFC training partner. Despite being spread out a bit around Western Canada, there are a lot of fighters who come together for the country’s greater good.
“You mentioned Lupita [Godinez],we fought each other twice as amateurs… we’ve become really good friends – almost like sisters and teammates,” Horth explained. “We trained together, I think three, four days a week. Just where we’re located, each gym sort of has like a token female and we all kind of do our own home-based stuff, but we all connect and collaborate. Our coaching staff all is closely tight-knit and they all work together.”
Using the “token female” from each gym, the different communities come together to create a super team. It allows them to get different looks as well as different eyes on what they’re doing.
“We’ve got grappling coaches in two areas and they all come watch us spar on Saturdays, and they come on Tuesdays and Thursdays to our striking stuff,” she said. “We all chat and we’re all like one big family. Each gym has a token female, so we kind of hop around to one another’s gyms and sort of help each other out during whoever’s fighting and who’s not.”
Now she’s hope that preparation leads to success when she steps into the cage against Tereza Bleda. Not only is she looking to get her hand raised on Saturday, but she’s hoping for a bit more as well.
“You know, my whole pro career before making it to the UFC, I never made it the distance once. I always finished it in the first, second or third round,” Horth said. “I’d like to be able to sort of get that first inside the time frame win.”
You can catch Horth’s fight with Tereza Bleda as part of the UFC Vegas 112 prelims this Saturday. They air on ESPN+ starting at 7pm EST.
You can also catch the entire audio of this interview with Jamey-Lyn Horth on the latest edition of the Top Turtle MMA Podcast. It begins below at 34:48.
