Alexis Dufresne wants 'cocky' Marloes Coenen again: 'I don't think I hit her enough in the face'

The last time Alexis Dufresne stepped into the Bellator cage, she scored an upset submission win over Marloes Coenen. On Friday, Coenen fights for a title, while Dufresne appears on the Bellator 174 prelims.

Dufresne says she’s not bothered by the card placement.

“I still get paid the same, so I’m OK,” Dufresne told MMAjunkie.

Dufresne insists she hopes to win a title but isn’t all that concerned about when it happens. But Coenen getting a shot ahead of her, well the “Sneaky Zebra” isn’t quite as thrilled about that.

“Of course the title fight would be cool to have – the belt, and it’s a lot of money,” Dufresne said. “That would be pretty awesome. But I think if I got the choice between a title shot with an opponent and a non-title fight with Marloes, I’d just want to fight with Marloes. I’d want that rematch.

“Of course the end goal is get that title and be the champion. That’s everybody’s end goal, but I have a lot of pride and a little bit of an ego. I want my rematch.”

It’s not often you hear the winner of a fight claim they want a second chance. But Dufresne feels she was disrespected by Coenen and her fans both before and after the Bellator 155 meeting in May 2016.

Dufresne was called in for that fight on short notice when Coenen’s original opponent, Julia Budd, was injured, and she missed weight for the fight, registering 150.7 pounds for the featherweight matchup. But Dufresne insists weight had nothing to do with the result.

“I’ve always known what I was capable of; it’s the fact that I never got my opportunity to show it,” Dufresne said. “As far as Marloes goes, as far as being an upset win, a fluke and all that – it’s not. It’s a fight. Sometimes that happens. Anything can happen in a fight, but it was the fact that she thought she was so good that there was no way I could touch her. She’s cocky. She couldn’t shake my hand before the fight. She couldn’t even shake it after. I’m a six-time world champion in jiu-jitsu, and she thought she was going to throw me around. Not so much.

“I took that fight four months after having my first baby, and they gave me the fight on 10 days’ notice because Julia got hurt. She said she took that fight as a favor to me – that she should fight for the title because she shouldn’t have had to take that fight when her opponent pulled out. What? That doesn’t even make sense. You were training for a five-round championship fight against a strong grappler. You couldn’t have had a better camp. My camp was taking care of a kid and then checking my weight 10 days before and being like, ‘Oh, crap. I’m 173 (pounds) and trying to make 145.'”

Coenen (23-7 MMA, 2-1 BMMA) now meets Budd (9-2 MMA, 3-0 BMMA) in the headlining bout of Bellator 174, which takes place Friday at WinStar World Casino and Resort in Thackerville, Okla. The night’s main card airs on Spike.

Meanwhile, Dufresne (6-2 MMA, 1-0 BMMA) faces Gabrielle Holloway (5-5 MMA, 0-2 BMMA) on the MMAjunkie-streamed prelims.

Dufresne admits she doesn’t know much about her opponent but insists that’s not unusual.

“I don’t really look at my opponents too much,” Dufresne admitted. “I don’t really look at a fight as expecting it to go a certain way. Anything can happen in a fight, so I’m not going to let myself expect or think certain things are going to happen.

“And no disrespect to my opponent, but I didn’t even know here name until two days go. I was told many times, but I just kept forgetting. I’m not interested. I just want to fight. No offense, but I don’t think knowing her name or watching her fights or anything like that is going to make me fight any better.”

Dufresne insists there will be no issues with weight this time around. She was 143 pounds earlier this week and might just hit the scales today fully clothed.

“Just to prove a point, I might be wearing my jeans and a sweatshirt,” Dufresne said. “Who knows? Just to piss everyone off.”

With a win, she hopes Bellator will consider booking a rematch with Coenen next, regardless of how she performs in the main event. Dufresne doesn’t even try to pretend there aren’t bad feelings involved. She’s got an ax to grind.

“One, it’s to prove a lot of her fans wrong when they said it was a fluke,” Dufresne said. “That was pretty funny because the same ones who were saying it was going to be no problem or an easy one for her, they were all the same ones coming up with excuses. So those are the ones I want to prove wrong, and most of all I want to punch her in the face a little more for disrespecting me.

“I don’t think I hit her enough in the face when I could have. I think I might have yanked on her arm a little harder, if I knew that, too. I had her arm, I saw that she started to cry, and I let it go. I shouldn’t have been that nice.”

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