Life on lockdown: Checking in with Bellator’s Ilima-Lei MacFarlane
Bellator MMA women’s flyweight champion, Ilima-Lei MacFarlane, is in quarantine like the rest of the world due to the coronavirus pandemic. Although others are beginning to feel restless and discontent with being confined in one place for such an extended and seemingly endless period, MacFarlane is enjoying her time hunkered down at home with her fiancé and their roommates.
Truth be told, MacFarlane does this when things are normal, so this quarantine is nothing but business as usual for the champion.
“I know this sounds bad, but I love staying home and not doing anything,” MacFarlane told MyMMANews. “I always say that I’m a part-time professional athlete because I will seriously stay home if I’m not in camp. If I don’t have a fight coming up, I will stay my ass at home. Lately, I have been forcing myself to go to the gym just because I know I have to, and my weight is kind of getting out of control. Even my coaches are like, ‘What are you doing here?’ and I’m like, ‘I know right! I’m just tired of being fat.’ Honestly, it hasn’t been hard for me at all. I actually really enjoy this quarantine, but again, that’s coming from a very privileged position. It hasn’t affected me so terribly that I’m not struggling. I wasn’t living paycheck to paycheck. I didn’t have a fight coming up, so yeah. I’m very blessed to be in this position to say that.”
As much as she enjoys staying home, MacFarlane needed things to do just to keep herself occupied. One of the very first things she set out to do was set up an at-home gym she has been trying to build for the last couple of months. MacFarlane received mats from Zebra Athletics last October, but because she was in the middle of training camp for Kate Jackson for her fourth title defense at Bellator 236 in Hawaii, she was unable to get around to it.
The gym is now complete after several weeks of work and it has given MacFarlane a new place to sharpen her skills without having to leave her home, which is admittedly an added bonus for the self-proclaimed homebody.
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“It’s nice because I kind of have the autonomy to do what I want and invite over who I want,” said MacFarlane. “We always joke around because everybody wants to come over and train [now] and I’m like, ‘Nah, this is password protected’. I get to choose who comes over, so yeah. I do go to the gym still to lift weights because our weight room portion isn’t complete yet, so we still need to go to the gym to use the machines and everything. As far as rolling and doing anything on the mats, we can do that all at home, which is really nice because I don’t have to leave.”
Alongside her work on the at-home gym, MacFarlane is also spending more time in the kitchen. She jokes that she has been eating guacamole every day because of her undying love of avocados, but that is not all she has been eating. MacFarlane is testing out different recipes each day and learning all about foods and the proper way they should be prepared.
By doing her own cooking, MacFarlane is hoping to keep her weight down during this time to ensure that she will still be in or as close to fighting shape as possible.
“I have been focusing a lot more on diet, especially since we’re at home and we’re not eating out as often, so we are kind of experimenting with pescatarian and vegan recipes,” said MacFarlane. “Some vegetarian stuff, so it’s really making us like actually prepare our own food because typically when I am in camp, I have meal prep. It isn’t a bad thing, but it is really valuable knowledge to know exactly what you’re putting into your body and how you’re preparing it. We’ve been cooking a lot more than we normally would be and I think that’s definitely going to translate into my next camp. Not to say that I won’t use a meal prep company, but I will know how to prepare food for myself a little bit better than I did last time.”
Despite there being no fight on the horizon right now, MacFarlane is keeping busy for her eventual return to Bellator, whom she signed a multi-year contract extension with back in February. The news of her re-signing did not come as a surprise to the world of mixed martial arts as MacFarlane has been with Bellator for almost all of her professional career.
The promotion has done right by her since then, which is why she decided to stick around for another two and a half years. MacFarlane says it is her loyalty that keeps her with Bellator.
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“I’m a pretty loyal person,” said MacFarlane. “I have been with the same gym since literally the first time I set foot through those doors and they took me all the way to a world championship belt. They’ve been with me throughout my entire professional career. So, it shouldn’t surprise people that I stay with one organization throughout the entirety of my career. It’s not that I’m against change. It’s just that I’ve always been really loyal.
“Anyway, I just wanted to stay with Bellator because really they had no business signing me in the beginning. I had one professional fight, which was the Soccer Mom fight and it’s like, ‘Who is this girl who came out of nowhere and reached virtual stardom?’ They decided to give me a chance and I kind of just worked my way up the ranks and I felt like they really did want to grow me and just see what I could so. Since then, we’ve had a really good relationship. You know I’ve never worked for another organization before, but I have teammates who have, and I didn’t like the way they were treated.”
MacFarlane refers to the incident regarding the release of longtime teammate and fellow women’s flyweight, Liz Carmouche, from the UFC. Carmouche was signed back in 2013 and served as one-half of the first-ever women’s fight in the UFC opposite of former champion and eventual Hall-of-Famer, Ronda Rousey.
From there, Carmouche competed in both the bantamweight and flyweight divisions. The last fight she competed in was for the women’s flyweight championship against Valentina Shevchenko at UFC Fight Night: Uruguay, where she lost by way of unanimous decision. A couple of weeks later, Carmouche was surprisingly cut from the UFC, a move that was found out by her and her management while she was in the middle of promoting an event for the promotion.
MacFarlane briefly thought about a potential future with the UFC, but after witnessing their “crappy” treatment of Carmouche, she quickly detached herself from that idea ever becoming a reality.
“It was a no-brainer for me to stay with Bellator.”
Staying with Bellator and closing the door on a run with the UFC may have been more than enough for MacFarlane, but it was not for those fans wondering what would happen if she were to go over and compete with some of the names on the roster.
A fight between her and the aforementioned Valentina Shevchenko is at the top of the wish list, but MacFarlane does not feel inclined to make that happen. When asked if it was frustrating to be pestered with comments regarding a fight that will likely never happen, MacFarlane brushed it all off.
“It doesn’t get frustrating because I honestly don’t give a s—t,” said MacFarlane. “There’s so many people out there saying, ‘If you really cared about your legacy, you would fight the best and you would go over to the UFC’ and I’m like well I guess I don’t give a s—t about my legacy because I have no desire [to do that]. I think it’s just different for me because like all fighters, their journey is different. It’s different because I never wanted to even be a fighter. It was on accident that I started fighting. Literally was on accident. So, I think that because that was never my intention, it doesn’t bother me to be like I don’t need to be the best in the world. I didn’t want to be in the beginning, so why would that change now? For all those people who give me s—t about it, I really don’t care because right now I’m making really good money and I’m fighting in a promotion who I consider family. They let me commentate events, which is like a potential future career for me. I’m thinking ahead and I’m not wrapped up in this whole debate.
“I don’t care about my legacy inside of the cage. I care about my legacy outside of the cage and what I do for the world.”
With her feet firmly planted in Bellator soil, MacFarlane is excited to get back to work. She is understandably worried about the long layoff as she typically fights twice a year, but it is looking more like MacFarlane will fight only once in 2020.
It is an unfortunate reality, but one MacFarlane has come to terms with because she knows the fights she will participate in when everything resumes make up for the time away from the cage, especially if those fights come in the form of the proposed women’s flyweight Grand Prix spoken about by Bellator president Scott Coker at the end of last year.
Judging from the success of the other Grand Prix tournaments put on by Bellator, MacFarlane believes her division can find the same success and gives the names of the women she would like to see competing with her.
“I think it’s great! I’ve loved all of the tournaments that they have put on so far,” said MacFarlane. “I’ve loved every single one of them. Even the selection show that they did for this last featherweight Grand Prix? That was super sick. I think it would be a really good idea for us, especially because I think our division is really good. The women are badass and they are beautiful. We have really good characters in the division, so I think that’s something that our viewers would want to see.
“I have my theory on who would be in it. I would think Liz Carmouche, which would also be like a super cool storyline if that happens for obvious reasons. Alejandra Lara, who had a badass fight against Veta Arteaga. I also think Veta might be in because she’s like super scrappy and tough, but we’ll see. I could see Kate Jackson being in it. She’s always been solid. And definitely Juliana Velasquez, the other undefeated Brazilian. I feel like if we didn’t have the potential tournament coming up, she would’ve probably been my next fight. That’s just my theory. I mean there’s definitely some big names in the mix, but I don’t have confirmation of anything. The only person I know that would be in the tournament would be me.”
