Joanne Calderwood was scheduled to challenge UFC Women’s Flyweight Champion Valentina Shevchenko for the gold at UFC 251, but Shevchenko suffered an injury and the bout has been postponed to a future date.
The coronavirus has been decimating the MMA community, much like it has the world as a whole, and Calderwood is just trying to make the best of the situation, despite missing her training partners.
“Considering what we’re going through right now, everyone knows the world is kind of upside down right now, apart from that everything is going really good,” Calderwood said on the Eurobash podcast (via Peter Carroll of MMA Fighting). “I’m lucky enough to be engaged to my coach and training has not really stopped. I’m just missing all of my training partners. To be honest, this time around we’ve had a lot more time to do fight study and game planning, so I’m kind of enjoying this downtime.”
There is no word yet on when Calderwood and Shevchenko will finally meet, as the majority of the UFC events are up in the air at the moment due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Calderwood does have one training partner working with her at the gym, but that training partner is staying under strict quarantine due to the coronavirus.
“We have another girl who is in strict quarantine, so we’re keeping our circle small. Obviously we’re cleaning the gym before and after. Everything is closed, but she’s the only person. It’s only me and my coach and her right now. She’s a really great, hard, southpaw training partner. We’re getting some great work in and I trust her. We’re just doing lots of drilling and lots of game planning,” says Calderwood.
Whenever the title fight against Shevchenko does come together, it will mark Calderwood’s first chance to win UFC gold.
