HONOLULU – Liz Carmouche touched gloves with DeAnna Bennett moments prior to their Bellator 294 bout Friday, but she did so with a bad taste in her mouth.
“Once the bell rings, I’m not going to play the game of touching gloves and letting you get a crazy swing,” Carmouche told MMA Junkie at a post-fight news conference at Neal S. Blaisdell Center. “With someone I don’t trust for being a cheater, I’m not going to trust she’s (not) going to take advantage of that moment either.”
Those who have followed Carmouche (19-7 MMA, 6-0 BMMA) during the span of her lengthy career know she very seldom, if ever, is anything short of respectful toward her opponents. But when Bennett (13-8-1 MMA, 3-2 BMMA) missed weight for the second time in as many head-to-head matchups vs. Carmouche, it struck a nerve.
“If you have the energy to put on a face, if you have the energy to joke around and make light of the fact that you’re not making weight, you have the energy to stay in that sauna, work out, and make the weight,” Carmouche said. “So she was fine. It’s just her claim to fame in this sport is missing weight, not making weight. That shouldn’t be it. You’re a professional MMA fighter. You think you deserve to be the champion by missing weight? That’s your whole career? You don’t deserve to have the belt. Now, if she put on that performance having made weight? I would be saying something different. I’d give her props for what she did. But the reality is that she cheated yet again by missing weight, like I said she would before this fight.”
Carmouche finished Bennett by submission, as was the outcome in their September 2020 meeting, too. This time, it was by fourth-round arm-triangle choke. According to the judges’ scorecards, Carmouche was down 30-27 on all judges’ scorecards through three rounds. Carmouche dug deep for the finish, motivated not only by Bennett’s success in the fight but the failures before it.
“If I outweigh somebody and I didn’t have to cut the weight, I would do pretty well on top, too,” Carmouche said. “So no, that wasn’t what I was banking on. I wasn’t banking on having to carry, into the fourth and fifth round of a championship fight. I wouldn’t to finish her off and make a huge statement and shut her up and get her out of this sport, so she can take her crude remarks and her lack of professionalism somewhere else.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for Bellator 294.
