benign tumor on her pituitary gland<\/a>, which allegedly caused her UFC 316 weight miss.<\/p>\n\u201cThe process wasn\u2019t quick,\u201d da Silva said. \u201cI didn\u2019t stop training altogether, but it wasn\u2019t my main goal. I took about two weeks off because my leg was pretty hurt, and I also took time to deal with the prolactin [issue] I had discovered. So I took about a month where I was more relaxed, training lighter. I automatically went back to training after that, but without thinking about competition, without thinking about fighting. In fact, I said, \u2018I don\u2019t think I want to compete anymore.\u2019 The disappointment of losing a goal you believed in so strongly is huge. It\u2019s so big that you can\u2019t even find joy in competition anymore, you know? I told [coach\/husband] Renato [da Silva], \u2018I don\u2019t think I can do it, but I\u2019ll keep training.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really enjoying training, but there came a moment when I felt discouraged,\u201d she continued. \u201cHe said, \u2018Just keep training anyway [laughs]. Just go.\u2019 But it was a long process, about two or three months. It was a healing process, of understanding that I am not that goal I had set for myself. Of finding who I really am, my goals, my purpose, and also seeing in training that I was evolving a lot. And then I said, \u2018I still have a lot to show that I haven\u2019t shown yet.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Life changed after leaving the UFC, da Silva said, Without having to worry about weight cuts, training camps and planning strategies for opponents, she felt lighter to just have fun in the gym like back in the early days. Doctors said she can still get hit in the face despite the diagnosis, but have to be smarter with her diet. Weeks went by and da Silva felt like evolving as an athlete at last, and the fire to compete burned one more time. Da Silva gave her manager the green light to talk to PFL about a potential deal and she\u2019s now moments away from entering the cage to face Inaba in a 15-minute flyweight showdown.<\/p>\n
Inaba scored half of her eight professional victories by knockout, but da Silva expect her to try something else in Pittsburg.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s a striker, but I noticed that in her fight against Dakota [Ditcheva] that she tried to take Dakota down in later rounds,\u201d da Silva said. \u201cI saw that in some previous fights as well, so I believe she\u2019s coming in looking to wrestle. She trained to take me down, you know? But she\u2019s also an athlete who isn\u2019t afraid to stand and strike. I see a lot of openings and many advantages I can have over her game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The PFL flyweight title is still vacant and \u201cQueen of Violence\u201d knows that her name carries a history in the division given her KSW and UFC past. She doesn\u2019t expect an immediate shot at Ditcheva next, as she hears rumblings of a possible Ditcheva vs. Luz Carmouche championship showdown for July, but eyes a spot on the same card.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe they would give me one more fight,\u201d da Silva said, \u201cand that would leave me with No. 3 ranked Taila [Santos] and No. 4 Denise [Kielholtz]. I think they would be good options would be for me to fight around the same time Liz Carmouche fights Dakota, on the same card, and then I would be the next title challenger. PFL is big in Europe so I definitely have a strong desire to have my next fight there. I think Denise would be even better because she\u2019s from there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ariane Lipski da Silva was released from the UFC just days after losing a decision to Wand Cong…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,1863,8417,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-562771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-pfl","14":"tag-pfl-news","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}