Tainara Lisboa's coach caught plenty of flak for his cornering at UFC Fight Night 292.
Lisboa (7-5 MMA, 2-3 UFC) was in the thick of a hard matchup against fellow UFC flyweight Lucia Szabova (13-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) in the first fight on the card. After Round 2, Lisboa returned to her stool and took quite an earful from her coach, who is also her husband, Bruno Polengo.
Lisboa was clearly down two rounds in the fight, and Polengo laid into her verbally to get her going. The entire exchange aired on the broadcast between rounds.
"You're f*cking embarrassing yourself," Polengo said in Portuguese (via MMA Fighting). "Is this what you trained for? What the f*ck is this? This b*tch has nothing on the ground. Wake the f*ck up. Wake up. You gotta grab her.
No f*cking slacking off. This b*tch is a three-time champion, and that's all she's got? Tainara, I want you to kill this b*tch. You have five minutes."
It's rare to see a coach get so intense with their fighter between rounds. There have certainly been instances when coaches get animated in an attempt to draw something out of their fighter when there is seemingly nothing left, but this particular instance felt like a step too far, which even prompted an immediate response from the commentary team of UFC Hall of Famer Daniel Cormier and Laura Sanko.
"I gotta be honest with you Laura, I did not love the corner work – no," Cormier said at the start of Round 3. "It can't be emotional. No matter what you feel for your fighter, how much you care for them, how much you want to help, you cannot give them an emotional message when the fight is going sideways for them. It's not an emotional problem."
Lisboa continued into the final frame and was finished by heavy ground-and-pound punches at the 3:20 mark of Round 3. The result was Lisboa's third consecutive loss, all by finish.
Polengo's corner instruction drew backlash online, which came as a surprise to the Lisboa camp. In an interview with MMA Fighting, Lisboa and Polengo explained that their emotional connection runs deep, and sometimes it takes yelling to "wake up" during a fight – and given her recent skid, they felt that Lisboa's UFC roster spot was on the line.
"It's so natural for me because that's my life in there," Lisboa told MMA Fighting. "We worked so hard to belong in that place, we went through a super complex surgery after my second fight. I had to learn how to walk again, I felt a lot of pain, trying to rehabilitate myself, find myself again, and that caused me a lot of mental problems. I had to deal with depression, I took medication, so being there is really a chance for a future, it's how we pay our bills.
"... I was embarrassed by what I did, by what I failed to do, by what I know my coaches and I prepared to deliver regardless of the result. That embarrasses me. And him trying to rescue me, yelling and trying to wake me up, is actually a huge proof of love. Even if he were just my coach. Love for my dreams, because he knows how important that is to me. It's a very decisive fight, a fight that will probably cost me my career in the organization, against an undefeated and very tough girl, and we had to accept it."
Polengo echoed his wife's sentiments and does not think he went too far with his work in the corner. He rejects the notion that his comments were abusive, and said that he would never do anything to hurt Lisboa. Polengo views his actions as holding an athlete accountable.
"I cursed at her because the way I have to wake Tainara up is by becoming explosive," Polengo said. "Explosive is the word. Anyone who knows me knows that’s how I am. When I shake Tainara up, she wakes up. But I knew that wasn't Tainara in there anymore. Man, this is our life. If we know we're going to lose and we know the UFC is going to send Tainara home, our life is on the line in there. My relationship with Tainara isn't just coach and athlete. We have a life together, and our life is very tough.
"... When it comes to abuse, you have to be very careful. Very careful. The motto at my gym is: don't take me away from home if you're not going to give your best. I never leave home to do something sh*tty in my professional life. I won't accept any athlete taking me away from home just to do something sh*tty. Tainara and I spent a fortune to be here. Now, imagine how I felt watching everything go down the drain because my athlete and wife lost herself.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Tainara Lisboa, coach respond to controversial corner work at UFC Vegas 123
