PFL San Diego
Where: Pechanga Arana
When: Saturday; early card, 5 p.m. and main card, 7 p.m.
Who: The main event features AJ McKee and undefeated prospect Salamat Isbulaev. Liz Carmouche also will face Viviane Araújo on the 10-fight card.
Tickets: Starting at $80.
Liz Carmouche is a tough, well-regarded professional mixed martial arts fighter, best known as the woman who battled Ronda Rousey in the UFC’s first-ever women’s MMA fight in 2013.
But a couple of years ago, she tapped out against an ongoing opponent she had battled for years: San Diego’s high cost of living. After being a resident of America’s Finest City for more than 20 years, Carmouche decided to relocate her family, eventually settling in Orlando, Florida.
The reason why, she told Times of San Diego, was that she and her wife Braelyn, a longtime horse trainer and rescuer, had a desire to own land for both business and personal reasons.
“She rides horses and it was just getting too expensive to try and even replicate even a small version of that San Diego,” Carmouche explained. “And when I fought in Orlando, she really liked the energy and how it felt so similar to San Diego.”
“She was born and raised in San Diego, she lived there her whole life, and she really liked Florida,” Carmouche said of her wife. “We were able to find 10 acres in Florida for a fraction of the cost if we had tried something like that in San Diego, so it just seemed like a no brainer.”
Carmouche hasn’t totally abandoned America’s Finest City, however. She still comes back occasionally when training for fights, and her wife, as a native, also still has ties to the city.
Carmouche actually will be back in San Diego on a business trip later this month: she’s one half of the co-main event for “PFL San Diego: McKee vs. Isbulaev,” an MMA card taking place Saturday at Pechanga Arena. The headliners are Long Beach native AJ McKee and undefeated Russian prospect Salamat Isbulaev.
Carmouche, 42, will be taking on Brazilian fighter Viviane Araújo, 39, in a three-round flyweight (125 lb.) matchup on the 10-fight PFL card. It’ll be only the second time that Carmouche has competed professionally in San Diego during her 16-year career.
PFL, which stands for Professional Fighters League, is a smaller competitor to the UFC, the organization that made Carmouche famous and to which she was signed for six years before being released in 2019.
Although both she and Araújo both were briefly in the UFC at the same time right before the end of Carmouche’s tenure, the two never crossed paths, as Araújo was still new and unranked and Carmouche was already a well-established veteran.
“She really wasn’t on my radar while I was in the UFC,” Carmouche admitted. “I was looking at the top five (fighters in the women’s flyweight division) at the time and she wasn’t quite there yet.”
Araújo, who was signed by the PFL last year after her own release from the UFC, comes into the fight with a 14-7 record and has alternated wins and losses in her last six fights.
“(I’m) certainly more familiar with her now and her aggressive striking nature,” Carmouche said. “She’s a fighter that constantly pushes the tempo and those are the type of fighters I like, because I feel like we bring it and I’m gonna match their tempo.”
