A recent pair of defeats, including one to Antonina Shevchenko, compelled Ariane Lipski to uproot herself in search of a new training environment at ATT in Florida – and she says she's eager to show off new skills this weekend.
The fight game can sometimes be described as an up and down pendulum, and her two most recent defeats to Shevchenko and Montana De La Rosa showed the Brazilian flyweight was very much in the 'down' position.
But rather than sit back and take a run of losses (quite literally) on the chin, Lipski, 27, saw her career downturn as an opportunity for self-improvement, something she says that she is eager to correct this weekend in her fight with Mandy Bohm in Las Vegas.
"I try to see this moment of my career with different vision because my two last fights in the UFC happened the same. I felt depression and believed that, 'OK, I lost a fight – I'm not good enough.' Then I won two fights in a row, and then it happened again," Lipski explained to the media ahead of her fight.
"So I'm trying to figure out everything differently, you know? Looking more realistically. I lost the fight because I have to fix this, OK what can we do? We can look for a gym to improve my grappling, my wrestling. I saw what I did good, what I did wrong. Every camp I'm training hard doing my best."
That led 'The Queen of Violence' to one of MMA's meccas, the American Top Team facility in Coconut Creek, Florida, a gym with a reputation as being a conveyor belt of mixed martial arts talent – and it is here that Lipski says that she has found her true calling.
"After my fight against Antonina (Shevchenko), they told me I need different (training) partners who can put you in different situations," she said.
"You have to be prepared for everything. And then we went to Florida and everything went so well, it flowed. We started training at American Top Team, the biggest MMA gym in the world. There are so many fighters from every place. Every training (session) I'm in different situations and this makes me prepared.
"Everything I can be doing to be better I'm doing."
Lipski's first opportunity to show off her adapted arsenal comes this weekend against the 7-0 Bohm, the undefeated German who fights out of Dublin, Ireland, and while Lipski craves a stand-up war, she says that she expects a ground-heavy approach.
"She's a striker but I think she's going to try to put me on the ground," said Lipski.
"All my opponents try to do this... but I am more focused on my game, you know? In this camp we really tried to focus on improving my game because if I improve my game I will be ready to fight with everyone."
Of course, one of the added benefits of training at ATT is sharing the same air as the greatest female fighter of all time and reigning UFC double-champion Amanda Nunes and Lipski says that 'Lioness' has been a crucial voice throughout her preparation.
"I had the honor to train with the champ-champ Amanda Nunes," she told Sportskeeda.
"She really helped me a lot. I mean, we drilled once but she's always... She's always been there, watching my training and saying, 'you could do this, maybe this could help.' Showed me some positions. So it's been amazing being there.
"I mean, I'm a striker. What I really, really want, you know, is to strike. To show my striking. I have a lot of combos and combinations to show because this is what I really like to do. But it's MMA, you have to be prepared for everything. Like I say, Antonina got me surprised. I won't let it happen anymore."
