Liz Carmouche has a sparring story about Jena Bishop, and she picked fight week to tell it. Speaking with Ariel Helwani, Carmouche said she submitted Bishop during a training session years back and that Bishop cried after losing the roll.
The timing is deliberate or careless, depending on how you read Carmouche. She defends the PFL women’s flyweight championship against Bishop on Friday, Oct. 16, in the main event of PFL Chicago at Wintrust Arena. The card carries the billing “Carmouche vs. Bishop 2,” so this is a rematch, and now there’s a gym grudge stacked on top of it.
In the clip Helwani posted on X, Carmouche said she was genuinely looking forward to the session when Bishop finally showed up. “Here’s somebody who’s been a black belt since 2013,” she said, adding that she expected to “get messed up on the ground” and was inviting it. By her account, Bishop was evasive at first, then came out going hard once she got pushed into it.
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Then came the finish. “Then when on the ground, I had a chance to submit her, and she cried that she lost,” Carmouche said. “Seeing her crying just definitely seemed like that was a little bit too emotional for somebody that was going that hard.”
Bishop hasn’t responded in the source material, but the PFL’s social team clearly smells the angle. The promotion posted separate promos about Carmouche (@iamgirlrilla on X) attacking arms and about Bishop’s fondness for armbars, plus a technique breakdown of the armbar Bishop used to win her PFL debut. Two fighters who like to take limbs, one of whom just told the world the other cried. Fine by me.
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Carmouche comes in at 26-8, Bishop at 11-3. Carmouche also told Helwani she considered retiring seven years ago. “If you talked to that person 7 years ago, there’s no way I would’ve said that I was still doing this, let alone going to be the main event, fighting for another title,” she said.
She’s already eyeing what’s next, too. Carmouche said a fight with Dakota Ditcheva is “the only matchup that could possibly make sense for PFL and for MVP,” provided Ditcheva is healthy from surgery. She didn’t hand Ditcheva much credit on résumé, saying Ditcheva had been fighting less experienced opponents, the kind some people call cans, though she praised Ditcheva as charismatic, well-spoken and good with media.
Further down the card, unbeaten featherweight Timur Khizriev (18-0) meets Gabriel Braga (17-3), and Gamid Khizriev (5-0) takes on Michael Boylan (6-1) at lightweight. The PFL lists the early card at 6 p.m. ET on the ESPN App and the main card at 11 p.m. ET on ESPN2. MMA Mania had the main card at 9 p.m. ET, so double-check your listings before you settle in.
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My take: Carmouche answers questions straight, and I’ll always take that over the usual canned praise for an opponent at a presser. But telling a story about making a black belt cry, then talking up Ditcheva before Friday’s fight even starts, hands Bishop all the motivation she could want. If Bishop gets an arm in that cage Friday night, Carmouche will have written the setup herself.
