Former UFC Women’s Featherweight Champion Germaine De Randamie was stripped of her title after the champion refused to face the top contender in Cyborg.
As much as losing her title affected the former champion, it was the comments made by various people through social media that hurt her the worst.
“People can say I’m scared,” De Randamie said on The MMA Hour. “I don’t mind. As long as I can look myself in the mirror and know I’m not scared. People can say I’m a cheater, I know I’m not a cheater. Of course it hurts, but I can’t change a person’s mind. If they believe that, it’s their opinion. But all the other stuff? Yeah, it hurt me. That hurt me more than losing the belt. That goes deep.It’s not only for me. This involves many other people. How many kids have been bullied, have committed suicide? I think that’s horrible. My only mission in life is to share what I love so much with the people that love it as much as I do. I’m talking about a lot of people who told me I should commit suicide and that I’m worthless. I’ve never been rock bottom, but it did hurt me. It hurt me because people think it’s OK to write something to somebody like that.”
De Randamie has since decided to return to the women’s bantamweight division and she will fight Marion Reneau at UFC Fight Night: Rotterdam.
Now that she is officially a former champion, the one thing De Randamie readily admits is that the belt didn’t mean much to her anyway.
“You don’t have to like me,” De Randamie said. “You can disagree with the decisions I’ve made. You can. But you don’t have to hurt people with things. That’s my opinion. I don’t care about the belt. What I do care about is staying me. It’s OK that they took away the belt. The only thing that I cared about was the things that people said.”
UFC Fight Night: Rotterdam takes place on Saturday, September 2 from the Ahoy Rotterdam in Rotterdam, Netherlands with Stefan Struve and Alexander Volkov headlining. Fightful is providing live coverage of the event, which streams live on UFC Fight Pass.
