Bellator 155’s Alexis Dufresne: ‘Nobody Saw the Real Me’ in the UFC

It’s been almost a year-and-a-half since Alexis Dufresne last climbed into the cage to put in an honest day’s work. The Team Quest fighter dropped a unanimous decision to Marion Reneau at UFC 182, which was her second consecutive loss. To add salt to the wound of defeat, Dufresne, who had missed weight for the second straight fight as well, was subsequently released from the UFC. In the meantime, the Californian used her time away from combat to not only reflect on what had gone wrong in her last two fights but to also start a family. Five months ago she gave birth to a baby boy and the miracle of life gave her a new lease on hers. “It’s a life-changing experience,” she revealed to Sherdog.com in a recent interview. “It programmed me to be a lot more dedicated to my life and my career. He’s motivated me even more to get out there and fight to be the best. He is my whole world. I literally started training five days after I had him so I can better provide for him as soon as I could, to build a better life for him than the one I had.” Her re-focused dedication isn’t something that came because she lost her way in training, however. She admitted that she was out of her league in the UFC but not because she wasn’t as good as her opponents, but because she was out of her element at bantamweight. A natural featherweight, Dufresne said that having to drop all that extra weight nearly killed her and it showed in her two performances inside the Octagon. “I’m happy to be at my normal weight again and I’m able to train better because of it,” she stated. “I feel so much better and I’m not …

continue reading in source www.sherdog.com