Athletes
Jamey Lyn-Horth Sees The Way Forward
Staying In The Win Column Drives Jamey Lyn-Horth To Be As Prepared As Possible For Her Flyweight Bout At UFC Austin.
The sixth win of Jamey-Lyn Horth’s professional mixed martial arts career was the most important, but after decisioning Hailey Cowan in April to keep her unbeaten record intact and move to 1-0 in the UFC, the proud native of Squamish, British Columbia, Canada didn’t sit back and take it all in.
She got back to work the following week, made some tweaks, and is ready to keep making statements when she faces Veronica Hardy this Saturday in Austin.
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“I'm going back down to flyweight from bantamweight,” she said. “Who knows what the future holds, but bantamweight, at this moment, was a one-time sort of thing. I got offered to come in and fight at that weight class, and I took an opportunity on five weeks’ notice and up the weight class. Since then, I've been back to the drawing board and working on recovery and gaining new experiences. I made two trips down to Mexico, so from my last fight in April until now, I've spent about six weeks down at Team Lobo."
The home to UFC flyweight champion Alexa Grasso, top bantamweight contender Irene Aldana and rising star Diego Lopes, among others, Team Lobo is also the training destination for strawweight up and comer Loopy Godinez, an old rival of Horth from the amateur circuit in Canada.
Well, “rival” might be too strong a term, considering that the two are training together these days following two fights in 2016-17 that saw Horth leave with a pair of decision victories.
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“We were both pretty early in our careers,” she said. “And then from that we both went our own ways and where we're from, there's not a lot of girls, and I knew we weren't going to fight again, so we just became training partners. And we've consistently been training partners for the last six years.”
Over that time, Godinez has become a Top 15 contender and fan favorite at 115 pounds, and now Horth, 6-0 as a pro, is on her way to doing the same thing at 125 pounds. And in keeping with her “all gas, no brakes” approach to not just fighting, but life, Mexico has been the perfect place for her in preparation for her next bout.
“The entire evening fight team training session is like 25 to 35 fighters, and everybody is a killer in that gym,” Horth said. “The way they train, the style that they impose, and just the actual training schedule is intense. For me, there were a lot of changes. I usually train midday, and sometimes in the evening, but down there it's 9pm until sometimes one o'clock in the morning. So that was a huge change for me, and we don't go out and spend a lot of time out and about. It's literally eat, sleep, and train, and that's what we did for six weeks.”
That dedication is expected to pay off this weekend, just like her work over the last five years in the pro game paid off in her Octagon debut, where she didn’t show any sign of the first-time UFC jitters, even though she admits they were there.
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“There were nerves, of course,” Horth said. “I think that it's only natural, and I think it's part of the process that everybody has nerves, and to say that you don't have any sort of nerves or anything like that, you just don't have feelings. I was going up a weight class and fighting against a girl that had more fights than I have, and I think that kind of feeling happens a lot. I've always trained to be in those stressful situations and in front of a crowd, no matter what sport I've played. But experience plays a role, as well, and I do experience a lot of those sort of stressful situations, but I never fought at 135 and having it be my UFC debut in Las Vegas, there were a lot of firsts, and I felt like I was able to embrace it, and I didn't feel any more nervous than I would any other fight. But I definitely do have nerves, and I think that that's kind of part of the fuel to the fire.”
Those nerves have kept Horth sharp, and perfect in her chosen profession. She expects more of the same against Hardy because she knows nothing else.
“There’s only two options - winning and losing - and I've visualized myself winning in so many different ways, and I've never experienced myself visualizing a loss,” she said. “I haven't ever sat there and been like, what am I going to feel like if I lose? What's my life going to be like if I lose? I just haven't. It starts to be thought in my brain and then it just goes away. And then I'm like, well, I'm not going to lose. I have this option, I'm going to do this, and I'm just going to work hard. That's when the physical part comes in, and I physically prepare myself in every way possible so that I can't lose.”
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