If you weren’t already excited for a showdown between two former Invicta FC strawweight champs, you probably are now, even if this won’t be five rounds for that promotion’s unofficial 115-pound G.O.A.T. crown. What it is, though, is the next chapter in a career in which Ducote continues to raise the bar for herself in terms of facing the best available competition. See, every fighter says they want to do that; Ducote has the record to prove it.
“That’s kind of been the story of my career,” said the Oklahoma product, who debuted against UFC vet Emily Whitmire in 2015 and never looked back. “I don’t want easy fights. That’s not why I’m here, that’s not my goal. I don’t want a 10-0 padded record. What I want is to fight the very best, and to do that, you need to have the challenge so that you have the necessary skills to fight the very best. A lot of people are technically skilled, but if you’ve never been challenged, then you don’t really have a full confidence in yourself to know that you’ve been everywhere with high-level athletes to know that you can handle yourself. I fought a lot of people on my way to the UFC and that gave me the confidence to know that I was on that high-level, so when I got in there with Penne in my debut, I wasn’t questioning if I deserved to be there. I knew that I should be there and that I was capable of being on that level with those athletes.”
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That confidence was evident against Penne, as Ducote fought like she had been on the UFC roster for years. First-time jitters? Not for “Gordinha,” who embraced the whole fight week experience like an old pro.
“It was everything that I thought it was,” she said. “The UFC’s obviously the biggest show, the most organized, well-run, and that was very clear the whole fight week and during the event, so I wasn’t surprised by any of that.”
