LAS VEGAS – Dana White wasn’t thrilled with Hailey Cowan’s performance, but he decided to award her a UFC contract anyway.
Cowan (7-2) edged out Claudia Leite by split decision Tuesday at Dana White’s Contender Series 50 and had to listen to White’s tentative analysis of her fight before he decided that he liked everything about her.
The 30-year-old got to show off her clinch work, which is her comfort zone, but admits she was hesitant to hang out in the clinch for too long to not engage in a boring fight.
“I know what it means, but I also don’t know what that means, but I’m thankful for it,” Cowan told reporters, including MMA Junkie, of the term “it factor” that White used to describe her. “I’ll take the ‘it factor.’ They don’t like the clinch, and I love the clinch, and I do a lot of damage in the clinch. So even this fight, I wasn’t able to hang out in the clinch very long, because I was worried about impressing him, and I didn’t want him to consider that boring.
“But I’ve never even been warned in the clinch to get to work. I’m always very, very active, so I probably would have been able to get a finish if I would have gotten that clinch more and did the damage that I did in Round 1, but I was very, very worried that he was not gonna like that.”
As for what Cowan wants next, she hopes her next fight won’t be at the UFC Apex.
“I don’t like the silence,” Cowan said with a laugh. “I was a college athlete, and college sports is very loud. I love the loud arenas. I would love to fight in Texas. I’m a Texan. You cut me open, and I bleed little lone stars. I would love to fight in Texas. That would be the dream.”
