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I have full use of my arm and I am right handed, with left-handed abilities. “Even when I broke my arm, I was training with my cast on in 2019, on the later, I was working again. I have a nutritionist, I have the right coaches, I was in a new environment and that’s forced me to bring my standards up. “I’m 5-11 and walk around at 180, so I blame a lot of my terrible fights on overcutting, getting down to 145 pounds, and I always say 10 pounds of that is my soul. I’m 3-6, haven’t fought in two years, I haven’t won since 2015 in MMA, so I’m perfect. When Ray called me, you have to look at me on paper. I f-g know I’m supposed to go in there and lose. “I do a lot of work for Roger (Artigiani, the owner of the 2300 Arena) and I know what they think. I’ve always been a bartender I’ve been in the (combat-sports) industry and there are a lot of plates to spin. I’m so prepared, and there is no other way to say it, but this is most prepared I’ve been. “I have to make weight, and I feel in great shape to do that.

“Claressa has a lot more to cut than me, and bigger parts are harder to cut,” Elkin said. She says she’s in the best shape she’s been in years and she’s not waiting to stand there and get hit by Shields. She had, what she describes, as a “vicious” eight-week camp. I’ve practiced in all of them and I think I have a great chance to win on Thursday and have a great transition.”Įlkins knows her role-she’s supposed to lose. “It’s about who can use what they know the best. It’s all these different arts and I don’t think people should just count me out because I’m not a ground specialist. “It’s boxing, it’s kickboxing, it’s wrestling. “Everybody is making a big deal that Brittney Elkin is purple belt in jiu-jitsu, but MMA is not just jiu-jitsu,” Shields said during a Zoom conference call. She has a background in jiu-jitsu and grappling, where she is 19-9 in ADCC. She’s been bouncing around different places, living in two different basements, one in Philly and one in Manhattan, New York. Originally from North Dakota, Elkin has lived in Westminster, Colorado, for the last 15 years and just moved to Philadelphia, where she is the operations manager at the 2300 Arena, doing everything from taking tickets, to working the door and bartending, which was doing last week before leaving for the Atlantic City bubble in preparation for the Shields fight. Shields is making around $250,000 for the fight. I know my MMA career is not the greatest.”Įlkin is getting 10-10, $10,000 to make weight and $10,000 to win. “I couldn’t get over the phone call, and I called Ray back to let him know it was April Fools and this better not be a f-g joke. “I was talking to Ray with all of this going on in the background and it was April Fools’ Day, so I was thinking about that, and your mind wraps around these things and before we got off the phone, I said ‘Yes,’ to fighting Claressa,” Elkin recalled. It definitely belongs in the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction department. It happened to be an event where a fighter lost a finger, so Elkin was talking to Sefo, while in the background over the PA system, the announcer was asking the patrons to look for a missing ring finger. She received the call on April 1, April Fools’ Day, from PFL matchmaker Ray Sefo while she was working an MMA fight at the 2300 Arena. She’s since heeled from that break, though she’s kept herself in incredible shape.

In her last fight, Elkin, who is 3-6 in MMA and will turn 35 this Friday, shattered her left forearm in three places making it look like a twisted spaghetti strand. ET) inside the bubble of the Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

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Shields will be making her MMA debut as a 155-pound, 5-round lightweight fight against Elkin, fighting for the first time in two years, on the Professional Fighters League (PFL) tour on Thursday (ESPN2, 10 p.m. She gave her small, encircled audience a thumbnail bio of herself and about the big step she’s going to be taking next-Claressa Shields.Īs the patrons began lining up in front of the 2300 Arena doors for the nightcap, Elkin returned back to her regular job for the evening-bartending. – Last Saturday, Brittney Elkin was holding court in the empty lobby of a boxing venue, Philadelphia’s 2300 Arena, talking to boxing people about mixed martial arts between the open time of a day-night boxing doubleheader.