Melissa Croden on Home Crowds, Rankings Pressure and Chelsea Chandler
Melissa Croden went into UFC Fight Night Edmonton fighting in her home province and holding a ranking. The ranked Canadian bantamweight was set to face fellow ranked fighter Chelsea Chandler on October 17, and in the days before the event she spoke about what fighting in Alberta means to her and how she deals with the weight of a top-10 spot.
Croden, who has recently sharpened her skills at Xtreme Couture and the UFC Performance Institute, called Alberta her motherland and said she would fight only on Canadian cards if she could. So far it has mostly worked out that way, she noted, with just one trip to Las Vegas. Walking out knowing the arena is on her side gives her a different kind of energy, something she never thought about before experiencing it and now looks forward to.
A number that adds pressure
Asked whether her ranking boosts her confidence, Croden said it actually adds a bit of pressure. She tries not to read too much into a number because rankings change so quickly, and because one punch can act as an equalizer and hand an underdog a shock win. To her, those upsets are not really surprising, since fighting is a strange sport where nobody knows which version of themselves will show up. "It's chaos in there and you're trying to find the control within that chaos constantly."
She illustrated the point with Charles Jourdain, who stopped fighting because he could not see, and recalled being punched in the eye in sparring and losing her vision for a few minutes. That kind of damage accumulates, she said, and nobody outside the cage knows what a fighter is feeling. Still, Croden said she is very proud to be in the top 10 and never imagined it would happen so quickly.
On Chelsea Chandler
Croden described Chandler as durable, tough and unafraid of challenges, with a resume that includes Priscila Cachoeira, Joselyne Edwards, Norma Dumont and Yana Santos, plus a solid jiu-jitsu background and a southpaw stance. Even so, she said her focus was on her own game plan rather than her opponent's, leaving most of the film study to her coaches and treating Chandler as if she held the No. 1 spot.