When Hailey Cowan steps into the cage on Saturday, it will be just a week away from a full year outside of the cage. That long layoff is never what a fighter is looking for, but for Cowan, it was necessary in more ways than one.
“I actually tore my meniscus again in my [last] fight with in the first round – this is my fourth meniscus surgery,” she explained. “I just went to pass guard and I felt the click and then my leg got stuck. That’s why round two, I didn’t look like round one because I couldn’t move. So I went and got that fixed. I tried to see if I could do it without surgery, but where the tear was, there’s no blood flow in that area. So I had to have surgery to get it removed.”
Not only was the time away necessary for her recovery, but she made some changes to her camp as well. After training near home in Texas for most of her life, she made the move out the fight capital of the world to improve her training. While she was originally hesitant about the move, she found a home with Eric Nicksick and gang.
“I moved out to Vegas. I’ve been training out in Vegas for about nine months. I feel like I’m at home,” Cowan said. “I obviously miss home a lot, but I’ve definitely found a second home at Xtreme [Couture] and at the [UFC] P.I. And I’m surrounded by people that I love, people that I trust. It’s been a good not a year that I didn’t want to take a year off, but it ended up being a very good thing because I was able to kind of grow with my new coaches and grow with my team.”
Not only has her training leveled up, but she’s now mentally in a better space as well. The sport, particularly with all of the injuries, had become more of a job and less of the thing she loved. Now it has returned to where she was at her best.
“It’s I almost lost my sense of reverence for the sport, because I was just like going from rushing from one injury to the next – almost that I was I was just waiting to get hurt again, like I lost my my like love for training. It was almost became a chore,” she said. “But I was able to change my mindset and kind of find my my love for the sport again. And so I’m having fun in training. I love all my training partners. I love being on the mats with the greatest fighters on the planet.”
You can see the fruits of this year outside of the cage when she takes on Alice Pereira at UFC Vegas 115. That fight takes place on the prelim portion of the card, which begins at 5pm EST on Paramount+.