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“MMA is so new and there’s so much to learn, and it’s so fun because there’s so many martial arts and more and more I see different ways that people do things, and also how similar they are,” she explains. “I’ll go to Spain in this little village and they’ll do the same thing as somewhere in America in a big gym, or somewhere in France or Brazil. These people have never seen each other, how is it that they do the same thing, or why is it that they do something different, and how can I implement that in fighting? For me, that’s just so amazing, and the fact that I have the opportunity to apply that and have so many people watching me, and having all that pressure and adrenaline, it is awesome.”
It can sound appealing, especially for a world traveler who has been able to train in such diverse locales as Brazil, England, France, Holland and the United States. But at this level of the sport, results need to match up to the journey, and Macedo was in a dicey position heading into her bout with Polyana Viana in Uruguay last summer.
The fight was a home game of sorts for the Venezuela native, since it was being held in South America, and after losing her first three UFC bouts, Macedo needed a win.
She got it, taking just 69 seconds to submit Viana and pick up a Performance of the Night bonus. All was well in the world of Veronica Macedo. Or was it?
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“To be honest, I still kind of don’t know what that feels like because the fight ended so quickly,” she said when asked about the emotions of getting her first UFC victory. “I’ve been so hard on myself lately. Three straight losses, and even though that fight was great, and the submission was nice, I’m still pretty hard on myself. Yeah, we did something nice but you still messed up three times before that and it’s still not okay. That doesn’t make up for everything wrong you did before that. You still have so much to prove and it’s not enough.”
Yeah, that is being pretty hard on yourself.
She laughs.
“It’s like when you’re about to fall off a cliff and somebody grabs your hand,” Macedo explains. “You’re still falling off a cliff, but now you’re kind of holding on and you haven’t fallen off yet. But you’re still in danger of falling. I was very happy because I didn’t end up falling that night.”