UFC 203’s Joanne Calderwood: Beating Letourneau showed ‘I belong here’

Anyone who followed Joanne Calderwood’s career closely knows that a couple years ago she was in a pretty bad place. Whether a mistake or a matter of circumstance, she’d ended up tying her personal and professional lives pretty closely together and when one started falling apart it seemed in danger of taking the other with it. A bad loss to Maryna Moroz, a close call against unheralded Cortney Casey. If she was going to become something closer to the contender many saw her as when she entered the UFC, something would have to change.

Fortunately for her, it seems that’s the case. Calderwood looked much more like the confident striker that marched through the Invicta ranks last time out, taking a TKO win over former title contender Valerie Letourneau in the process. And in a recent interview with Ariel Helwani she detailed the difference between where she was, and where she is now.

“Yeah, completely different,” Calderwood said of how she felt going into the Letourneau fight. “Just felt comfortable, happy. The most important thing was believing in myself and just enjoying it. It’s just like, “I do this every day and this is what I do. I don’t do anything else, I don’t want …

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