Michelle Waterson lifts the lid on two new opponents: Homeschooling and home cooking

UFC strawweight contender Michelle Waterson has shared the octagon with the best in the world at 115 pounds, but now she’s stuck at home during the coronavirus lockdown and facing the challenge of two tricky new opponents.

Chatting to MMA Junkie from her Albuquerque, N.M. home, Waterson (17-7 MMA, 5-3 UFC) said that she’s still keeping fit with at-home workouts, but said being stuck in the house has brought other tests during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

“There’s been a lot of stuff we’re having to take care of here at home,” she explained. “My daughter is no longer going to school, so I’m having to homeschool her now, which takes up a lot of my time.”

Waterson may be a role model as one of the UFC’s top female athletes, but when it comes to teaching her daughter, it’s a whole different ball game, as she explained.

“My daughter’s very smart, but it’s just having to wear a different hat,” she said. “She’s very receptive to me as a mother and a mentor in certain aspects of her life. But she has a teacher, and when I try to step into that role there’s definitely a bit of a learning curve on both of our ends, because when I try to explain stuff to her, it’s not how the teacher explains it to her, so she’s like, ‘whatever!’”

One thing fighting has prepared her for, however, is the quarantine mentality that fighters have to embrace when they go into fight camp, especially when they’re starting to taper down their weight ahead of fight week.

“That’s why I love fighting, because it prepares you for things outside of fighting,” she said. “As fighters you have to be prepared for the unexpected and this is definitely one of those things.

“Basically, when you go into fight camp, it’s like going into quarantine!” she laughed. “You can’t do nothing, you can’t have a drink, you can’t go party! But I would say my daughter’s going a bit stir crazy. My mum, too.”

The presence of Mama Waterson provides another challenge to “The Karate Hottie,” who says her mother’s love of cooking has proved to be a double-edged sword in her house during the lockdown period.

“She wants to get out of the house so bad, but she can’t,” she explained. “And that’s hard too, because the thing she does to keep herself calm is cook, and then I eat her food, because it’s delicious, and then I’m moving up to 125 pounds!”

In good spirits and full of smiles, despite her less-than-ideal situation, Waterson said she’d love to jump straight back into the octagon and fight. But she also understands the need for a lockdown, and how sometimes it’s best to sit tight and ride things out.

“That’s hard to say because it’s my career. That’s how I make a living, that’s how I feed my family, that’s how I bring money to the table,” she said. “So selfishly, I would like to be able to fight so I could pay my bills and be able to continue to help support my family.

“But on the other end, there are things that are out of my control, and sometimes when you try to force something that isn’t supposed to be forced, it makes things worse than they were before. So I’m just trying to make the best of the situation, take advantage of the time I have at home with the family, and stay grinding.

“Honestly, it really could be worse. What they are asking us to do is stay home with our loved ones, so that we don’t get sick. That is not a huge sacrifice. So she has to learn how to sacrifice, and if you can’t sacrifice staying home for a couple of weeks and not seeing your friends so that you don’t see this thing spread and really change your world, then you don’t have any patience and that’s what you need to learn. It’s a teaching moment.”