On the surface, Paige VanZant appeared to be taking her second bareknuckle boxing loss in a row in her stride recently, but now in a candid vlog with her husband, Bellator fighter Austin Vanderford, she’s revealed the inner turmoil that led her to having suicidal thoughts post-fight.
“I’m bummed out. I mean, I’m bummed out to say the least,” VanZant said. “Everyone expects me to lose, and everyone expects me to fail.
“I don’t know, I just feel like people have this specific perception of who I am and especially online. It’s crazy how much people can hate on a single person. I just don’t get it. I pride myself on being a good person, and I think that’s the most important thing for me: I never talk bad about my opponents. I never say a single negative thing about their character. You never know what somebody is going through, and you never know what someone is on the verge of.”
In PVZ’s case, she admits to telling her husband some “terrible things” on the night of her loss to Rachel Ostovich.
“I told him I didn’t want to live anymore, that this wasn’t for me anymore,” VanZant said. “Life wasn’t for me anymore. It’s disappointing. It was hard.”
It’s certainly been a rough period for PVZ in her combat sports career, having left the UFC after losing three of her previous four fights and struggling with long injury layoffs, and then has failed to get back to winning ways after a surprising, and potentially ill-advised, switch to bareknuckle boxing.
It’s all a far cry from the early stages of her career, when PVZ was hailed as a rising star after winning her first three UFC fights in a row, while also crossing over to the mainstream by finishing in second place on the ‘Dancing With The Stars’ TV show.
That being said, VanZant is still only 27-years-old and has been earning more money in BFKC than she did in the UFC, while her OnlyFans style website has reportedly been making her a small fortune and she has millions of followers on social media, in addition to being happily married, so it’s not all doom and gloom.
Watch the full vlog below.
