View: https://youtu.be/ospYquowal0
Sometimes in life, it's the negative points that help create overall positives in the grand scheme – hopefully, that's a lesson everyone's learned in some form from the unprecedented year that 2020 was. For Desiree Yanez, push aside all the global turmoil, and she was just looking throw hands.
Here now in the month of April, Yanez finds herself prepped and ready for the biggest fight of her career – something that she once again feared wasn't going to happen after her coach pranked her saying her opponent dropped out on April Fool's Day.
2020 left the Texan feeling devastated due to three separate fight cancelations. It almost felt like she was being told that she wasn't supposed to fight anymore – a choice that was even briefly considered. However, the thought of going out and getting a "real" job just made matters all the more depressing.
Instead of giving up, Yanez persevered through the rough times and it changed her outlook for the better.
"I feel like it helped me grow," Yanez told MyMMANews of her extended time away from competing. "It helped me grow into the flyweight division and also, I've gotten one camp training to figure out Veta [Arteaga] and now I have a whole other camp preparing and training for her. So I kind of considered it a blessing, you know? It was very crappy, I hated it, I wanted to fight. It was very depressing at the time because I honestly didn’t know what I was doing with my life at one point. Now, everything happens for a reason. I know that's so cliché, but it's true. So I hope that year off kind of made me an all-around better MMA fighter and hopefully I get to execute and see how that year off has done for me.
"I am a fighter through and through. Even though I've only been fighting for five years, I've been a fighter inside. I was just like, 'You know what? Shut up, stop feeling sorry for yourself, some people have it worse. Some people are really going through it and you just can't fight. Like, get over it.'
"Take it and run with it, and use it to your advantage. That's exactly what I've been doing."
Continued: Desiree Yanez seeks fun time in Bellator after stumbling into MMA lifestyle
