The UFC hosted three amazing events last week where Lance Palmer, who is a World Series of Fighting featherweight champ and one of the Team Alpha Male fighters, sided with one different teammate every night during the MMA event.
Last December 10th, Palmer went to The Chelsea at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas to witness the fight between Rose Namajunas and strawweight MMA fighter, Paige VanZant. He went in to support VanZant as going against Namajunas is the biggest fight of her career to date.
The crowd is rooting for VanZant to win the bout, but Namajunas proved them all wrong. It was clear throughout the fight which of the two deserved to win. Although VanZant poured all of her strength and heart into the fight, Namajunas came out victorious by a rear-naked choke in the fifth round.
Even though VanZant lost that night, Palmer believes that there’s something good that will come out of this. He said that VanZant needs to improve more on her skills in wrestling and he sure that VanZant’s teammates will give her the push that she needs.
“It’s just one of those fights where you become a better fighter just from being a part of that fight. She’s 21 years old; she has a lot of learning to do. A lot of things that she could work on is obviously her wrestling, you know, her partners have to push her a little harder. They need to push her harder and make her work harder instead of just kind of letting her go through the flow at practice. There needs to be that kind of gray area that you don’t step over but you push the limit a little bit… Obviously, we’re not out there to hurt each other in practice, but I think she needs more intensity from her sparring partners and her drilling partners because that’s really how you get better,” he said.
The next night, Palmer went on and cornered Chad Mendes who went against UFC lightweight champ Frankie Edgar.
This time, however, the bout didn’t last that long.
Mendes was knocked out in just about two minutes into the first round of the MMA fight. Sadly, this is the second time Mendes faced his KO/TKO after he got knocked out by McGregor just recently.
“He just got caught. I think he’s alright and he’ll bounce back. But it puts him in a weird position in the division, because I don’t really know where they go next for him here. I know he will take some time off and he’ll come back strong,” Palmer said.
On his third night as a cornerman for the said events, Palmer cornered Urijah Faber, also known as “The General”.
“We knew that he would go in there and perform regardless of who won and lost the nights before. It was good to end on a good note and finish the weekend with a ‘W,'” Palmer said.
During the post-fight conference, Faber confirmed that he would be very much willing to fight T.J. Dillashaw, who was a former Team Alpha Male member and the current UFC bantamweight champ.
There is a huge possibility that this fight will happen, but Palmer might not be there to corner either one of them.
“I still have a good relationship with TJ. think the thing with him and Urijah is a little different because Urijah brought him in and that’s just a different thing. I think in that situation I wouldn’t really corner either. I’ll probably just take a back seat and watch the fight. A lot of us have talked about that’ I don’t know who would corner who… Obviously, TJ has his Team Elevation people now, so they will probably corner him, but I don’t know who would corner Faber,” Palmer said.
For now, Palmer would need to focus and prepare for his upcoming fight against Alexandre de Almeida at WSOF 26 this coming Friday.