Irene Aldana knew she had to deliver following UFC 264 weight miss

LAS VEGAS – One way or another, Irene Aldana had to make up for for her shortcomings leading up to Saturday’s fight.

The UFC bantamweight contender failed to make weight for her bout against Yana Kunitskaya on the pay-per-view main card of UFC 264. Aldana (13-6 MMA, 6-4 UFC) won the bout in a dominant showing, stopping Kunitskaya (14-6 MMA, 4-3 UFC) by TKO in the first round.

Aldana came into the bout 3.5 pounds over the limit. It was the first time in her UFC career she failed to make the bantamweight mark. And though Aldana explained the weight miss came down to circumstances outside of her control, the Mexican fighter still felt she needed to make up for the hiccup.

“It was important for me to have a good performance because I knew I screwed up once, and I needed to make it better tonight in the fight,” Aldana told reporters at the UFC 264 post-fight news conference. “I just needed to stay focused, do my job and don’t let that get into my head. It was just an honest mistake – it happened.”

Aldana thinks some fans fail to understand some of the hurdles female fighters run into when preparing for an MMA fight. The Lobo Gym product assures the weight miss was a mistake and wasn’t done to get an unfair advantage.

“They don’t know (what it’s like),” Aldana said. “I’m not a dirty fighter. I’m not someone who would have done that to take advantage of my opponent in the fight. I would never do that. Actually, I was on the other side of that two times before with Bethe (Correia) and in Mexico (with Vanessa Melo), and that’s it – it happens. You make a pact, you take the fight, and that’s it.

“This time, as a professional fighter in this kind of sport, sometimes your menstrual cycle changes a lot and you don’t know when it’s going to happen. In my case, I never know when it’s going to happen, and I didn’t know it was going to happen this week – and sadly it did. I couldn’t prepare for that. I tried. I tried to the last minute to cut the weight, but my body just stopped sweating.”