UFC Strawweight Claudia Gadelha Reveals She Nearly Pulled Out of Carla Esparza Fight

Eu não quis sair da luta de jeito nenhum, mas segunda feira da semana passada eu estirei um ligamento do joelho e a posterior da coxa e fui lá lutar por vocês. Agora é cuidar e voltar mais forte. Obrigada a todos os que torcem. Beijos Big thanks to all my coaches, teammates, friends, family and specially this awesome lady @heatherlinden that helped me to fight with a strained ligament on my knee.

A post shared by (@claudiagadelha) on Jun 10, 2018 at 5:39am PDT

On Saturday night at UFC 225, a strawweight bout between the Brazilian Claudia Gadelha and her longtime rival Carla Esparza finally came to fruition after two previous attempts between the pair were scrapped during their time with Invicta Fighting Championships. Although according to the Brazilian, there was almost another cancellation.

Gadelha narrowly pulled out a win over Esparza on the weekend and revealed on Instagram that she strained a ligament in her knee less than two weeks out from the fight, but fought through the injury after withdrawing from the previous two scheduled fights.

“I didn’t want to pull out of the fight, but on Monday of last week I strained a ligament knee and the posterior thigh muscle and went there to fight for you,” Gadelha wrote. “Now I’ll take care and come back stronger.”

Gadelha posted after the fight on her Instagram stories that “I blew my knee in the first round” and was at the hospital, hoping everything would be fine.

With the win on Saturday night, the 29 year-old strawweight improved to 5-3 under the UFC banner after coming off a loss to Jessica Andrade in September.