Even Holly Holm has heard enough about the head kick that shocked the world.
Heading into her UFC 196 title defense against Miesha Tate on March 5, the UFC women's bantamweight champion is out to prove there's more to her than just being the fighter who slayed the unbeatable Ronda Rousey in November.
At a media luncheon in Los Angeles, Holm addressed the lingering hype from her historic win.
"I don't want to be a one-hit wonder is probably the thing I've been saying about that. I don't want it to be this one performance. I want to show people that I'm here for a reason and for me, I want to keep going, I want to keep getting better, I want to keep learning," Holm told Damon Martin from FOXSports.com. "Trust me, the last fight was one of the best moments of my life but I don't want my whole career to be defined by one fight. I don't want my whole life to be focused on that."
Now that she has the belt, it's easy to forget the idea of Holm challenging for it was initially met with skepticism. Up to that point, her UFC career was comprised of two lukewarm decision wins.
Holm views the Tate fight as being the next part of a sequence of interconnected challenges dating back to her first walk to the Octagon.
"I feel like to live up to the hype of the debut was, I don't think I could have even done that," Holm said. "Then after that it's like 'well her first fight's out of the way, the Octagon jitters are out of the way so now what are we going to see?'. Now it's Ronda - so is she even ready? Then after Ronda it's like now after that knockout, what more is she going to show? After every fight, every fight has its own pressure. So there's a lot of pressure behind this."
