Cory McKenna credits her hard-working parents for opening a path to the summit of professional MMA.
McKenna resides in the UFC’s strawweight division and is the first Welsh female fighter to be signed to Dana White’s roster.
GettyMcKenna was submitted by Jaqueline Amorim in her last bout[/caption]
Tonight, she faces Julia Polastri, who has never been stopped inside the octagon, at UFC Fight Night 244 in Las Vegas.
Speaking exclusively to talkSPORT.com, McKenna reveals it was her parents’ toughness that propelled her to the position she is in today.
“My dad was in the military, so he was away a lot but he was also a marathon runner,” she said, recalling her childhood.
“My mum was pretty active; she was in the military when they met – I ruined that for her!
“But they always said, ‘Hey you don’t have to do it professionally but you have to be active.’ That was their big thing as parents.”
Growing up between England and Wales, ‘Poppins’ made her amateur MMA debut in September 2014 and turned pro three-and-a-half years later.
She is now based in Sacramento, California, fighting for Team Alpha Male, the MMA gym founded by UFC Hall of Famer Urijah Faber.
McKenna, who used to be nicknamed ‘The Hobbit’, says it was Faber who suggested the name change after he had worked “very hard to get it to stick.”
“I started doing martial arts because I was really bad at everything else,” McKenna added.
“When I was 13 my dad said, ‘You’re already doing everything, why don’t you just give MMA a go?’.
McKenna’s last octagon win came in December 2022 against Cheyanne VlismasGetty
“I was like, ‘Sure’, so we went and checked out a gym down the road and I jumped into the adult classes with the pros because they had a young lad about my age there at the time.”
McKenna earned her UFC contract with a victory over Vanessa Demopoulos on season four of White’s Contender Series in 2020.
The series offers prospects the chance to earn a contract with White’s promotion and has seen its graduates, such as Sean O’Malley and Jamahal Hill, go on to become UFC champions.
“Then, after a few weeks there, I said to my mum that she may as well come and do it with me.
“She was the one who got me into karate, so she was still doing that. I needed a girl to train with and that’s pretty much it.
“We both loved it and we made our amateur debuts on the same card, I believe, it was pretty cool.”
McKenna followed up her Contender Series victory with a unanimous-decision win over Kay Hansen in her promotional UFC debut.
Zhang Weili is the current strawweight champion and a two-time UFC titleholderGetty
She would then lose to Elise Reed in March 2022 via split-decision, before winning her next two fights by the end of the year.
After nearly two years out of MMA as she battled illness, ‘Poppins’ returned to the UFC in March 2024.
She was submitted by Jaqueline Amorim in the first round, but tonight gives her the opportunity to get back on track in White’s promotion.
The Welsh fighter is the underdog going into her bout with Brazil’s Polastri.
McKenna takes part in the only female fight of the night on a card headlined by No.1 ranked flyweight Brandon Royval as he faces Japan’s Tatsuro Taira.
‘Poppins’ is scheduled for the third bout on the preliminary card, which is set to begin at 9PM for UK fans, with the main card kicking off at midnight.
China’s Zhang Weili is the current champion of McKenna’s strawweight division.
Elsewhere in the women’s leagues, Valentina Shevchenko is the champion of the flyweight division and Julianna Pena the bantamweight division, the heaviest for female fighters.
McKenna also commented on the possible return of former two-division champion Amanda Nunes, who has been retired from the sport for over a year.
She claims Nunes would ‘smoke’ Pena, but a fight between her and ‘absolute beast’ Kayla Harrison, a former Olympic Gold medallist, would be a good fight.
