Last month, the Three Arena, Dublin played host to what will go down as one of the most important nights in Irish MMA History. British Mixed Martial Arts promotion BAMMA made their eagerly awaited Irish Debut in front of around six thousand Irish MMA Fans. On the card there were a number of pro Irish MMA fighters either making their debuts or continuing on in their professional careers. The main card featured two Irish fighters, Chris Fields and Catherine Costigan. On fight week I spoke with Limerick fighter Catherine ‘The Alpha Female’ Costigan to discuss her camp, women’s MMA in general and her expectations for the night. Now a couple of weeks after BAMMA 22, I caught up with Catherine again to discuss what was a difficult night for her as she conceded defeat in the first round to her late opponent replacement Celine Haga.
We started off by discussing how Catherine was feeling about her loss to Celine, “Some days suck, some days you try to put it out, its something no fighter ever wants to feel, but what do I do? do I just sit down? keep giving up? I can’t, I have a job to do, people to teach, a gym to run, bills to pay, you just have to kick yourself forward and go what can we fix? what can we make better?”
Catherine’s loss came via an armbar in the first round, I asked Catherine had she had a chance to sit down and watch the fight, “No I try to take away from it for a little bit, I will watch it obviously and see, I am working with a new sports psychologist now and he watched and said all the things we worked on for three weeks beforehand, he did a lot of positive stuff that actually came out in the fight that we had been working on and I was happy with that, so its not all bad, not like Ambers fight, I felt like I gave her something, I got caught in a very vicious arm bar that I didn’t even see coming and if I didn’t tap, my physio said to me I would have been out for more than three to four weeks, I have torn a muscle in my elbow that I have to rest for the next four weeks before I can even lift or do anything with it but I will be absolutely back, I have to take care of it and rest”
Catherine was originally supposed to be fighting Simona Soukupova at BAMMA 22, she was forced to pull out a couple of weeks before the fight due to injury. Celine Haga answered the call to fight Catherine on short notice which forced her to miss the agreed catch weight by nearly six pounds. “Why people keep calling it an atomweight fight I don’t know, she didn’t even make the catchweight, I don’t see why Celine didn’t contact BAMMA earlier on in the week to say I have no way in hell to make that weight, will you back Catherine off, I was cutting my calories and I was walking around with a low level of energy, I could have been a lot more up for the fight and it would have made a big difference to me if she had said, right I can’t make 50kg, maybe we can do 52kg, I literally had forty five minutes to an hour to think did I even want to take the fight, and you know me, there was no way I was going to let everybody down, but looking at it now, I would never ever do it again, there is no excuse for not making weight anymore, we weren’t giving out to Celine but if she said 50kg, she should have made 50kg”
Looking forward now from BAMMA, Catherine still has a multi fight deal signed with Invicta FC in the US. “I am definitely going to have a chat with Shannon (Shannon Knapp, president of Invicta FC) and see what they want to do with me, when they are ready to have me back I will answer the call and I will go but of course its up to them, they have signed a lot of new atomweight’s so there is a big queue. BAMMA are also interested in having me back, they saw how hard I worked with the media and I enjoyed it, it didn’t take any time out of my training, it was done carefully in time frames when I wasn’t training, I was very happy getting on the Nicky Byrne Show, the day and night documentary, so many positive things, BAMMA loved that and I sold a lot of tickets, yes it wasn’t the Catherine Costigan show but I put a lot of people in seats to see Catherine Costigan”
When I spoke to Catherine the week of the fight, one thing we discussed was how big her opponent Amber Brown appeared at Invicta in July and at BAMMA, there was a size disparity again between Catherine and her opponent Celine, partially down to Celine missing weight, Catherine says that this will be her focus to make herself a bigger atomweight for when she returns to fighting at Invicta FC. “I do want to change my body and make myself a stronger atomweight, thats going to take a little more time, you wouldn’t really do that in a fight camp so its good to be outside the fight camp now so I can work on that, my dream would be to go to America and train, its just going to take a lot of money, and I run a full time gym which I would need to find cover for, but I have always liked Tristar and what they do, I seen a lot of Irish have gone over there such as Joseph Duffy and Paul Redmond, there is a reason they are going and I have watched all of Firas Zahabi’s technical videos, I would love to lock myself away for a month to train and to have girls to train with.”
On when we will see Catherine in the cage again, she isn’t sure just yet but she has her suspicions. “I don’t know if Invicta will call me, I have a suspicion that they may have another show around when Conor McGregor is fighting in December, If I am ready, I will be up for it, if I am not ready yet I wont, I will really look at everything but I am certainly not retiring, I am not going out this way, I need to go out on my terms when I am ready.”
THE MMA Andy Blog. 