Roxanne Modafferi: Breaking Career Trends with Winning Streaks

Sign up for ESPN+ right here, and you can then stream the UFC live on your smart TV, computer, phone, tablet or streaming device via the ESPN app.

In the Ultimate Fighting Championship women’s flyweight division, Top 15 competitors are often just a short winning streak away from scoring an invitation to the Valentina Shevchenko championship challenge. However, despite a notable eight-fight run in the promotion -- and being ranked for much of that time --Roxanne Modafferi has remained just outside of championship consideration. That’s because she has alternated wins and losses for the entirety of her UFC run. On Jan. 20 at UFC on ESPN 20, “The Happy Warrior” hopes to change all that and secure her first promotional winning streak at the expense of Brazilian talent Viviane Araujo.

“I feel like my career has been a rollercoaster of positives and negatives. I’ve been more frustrated about the circumstances surrounding these things. It does make for a colorful Christmas-style [look] on my Sherdog [fighter profile], with the alternating greens and reds,” Modafferi told Sherdog with a laugh. “But a lot of my opponents missed weight, so that was the most frustrating thing. And I have that hanging over me like, I’ll never know whether that affected the fight or not. A few times I’ve been injured. Sometimes I had great performances. I don’t know. I’m just trying not to be frustrated about the win-loss thing. Hopefully, I’ll break it with my next win and get two in a row.”

Along with talking the highs and lows of her UFC career, the 38-year-old spoke about her upcoming fight on Yas Island, and the possible clash between two fighters with an aggressive approach to their fighting strategies.