Angela Hill won’t hold her breath waiting for a rematch with Claudia Gadelha.
The former Invicta FC strawweight champion is interested in running back her fight with Gadelha after their competitive and controversial bout in the co-main event of UFC on ESPN 8 earlier this month. But despite wanting the rematch, Hill (12-8 MMA, 6-8 UFC) is not too confident it will happen.
The bout in Jacksonville, Fla. ended in a split decision win for the Brazilian, but many thought Hill had done enough to obtain the victory. In retrospect, Hill stands by her comments saying she won the bout.
“Looking back, I still think it was a decisive win in the third round,” Hill told MMA Junkie. “I think everyone is on the same page – first round to her and second and third round to me.
“But there’s also more you can do, so I’m trying to move past that point where I just feel helpless and angry at everything. I’m trying to move towards making that not happen again in the future because this is not the first time where I’ve gotten a loss where I think I did enough to win, but this is the highest-profile fight that it happened. It was such a big deal for me to get that win, and I felt that I secured it.”
In a recent interview with Sirius XM, Gadelha, a former UFC title challenger and longtime strawweight contender, said she has no interest in fighting Hill again.
“I am a pioneer in the sport. I’ve been fighting for so long,” Gadelha said. “It’s not easy to get into the top 10. It’s not easy to get into the top five, and I gave Angela a good opportunity to go out there and beat me, you know? She tried everything she could; it was a pretty close fight. I definitely think I won the first and third round, the second round I lost because of the knockdown.
“And everybody is talking about, ‘Oh, you know, Claudia got beat up by Angela.’ If you take out the knockdown, I was getting the power punches. I took her down. I walked her to the cage. We had some good striking exchanges. But I also wanted to challenge myself and have a good stand-up fight with a good striker because I feel like that’s where I’m evolving the most.
“At the end of the day, I am the winner. And I beat her at her own (expletive) game, which is striking. I’m a grappler, I grew up grappling. I’m just evolving as a striker now, and I beat her in her own game. So she’s talking a lot of (expletive) and being disrespectful to my nationality and my accent and things like that, so (expletive) no, there’s no rematch.”
For her part, Hill thinks Gadelha’s lack of interest has to do with the nature of the fight more than anything else.
“I’m definitely interested in a rematch with Gadelha. That’s the first thing I told my manager, is to set that up,” Hill said. “But she doesn’t want to rematch me. It was too hard. Her whole game plan was to drag me down and hold me down. And when she can’t do that, the fight is too hard for her. So she’s not going to take that rematch. I dare her. I dare her. I would love that.
“I would come into that fight with all my adjustments made. I’d hit harder, I’d throw more, I’d bust her face up more, so I definitely think she would say no to that. But I would love a rematch with her.”
Angela Hill: Claudia Gadelha doesn't want rematch because 'fight is too hard for her'
