Between MMA and bare knuckle boxing, it looked like the Baddest Babe around would, barring any catastrophic injury, stay in the fight game for some time to come. Instead, Paige VanZant took the OnlyFans route – and now she’s explaining why.
Leaving the UFC
VanZant sat down with MMA Fighting and revealed that part of the reason was her age. She signed on with the UFC at just 19, and fought for six years with the promotion. While it would have been the comfortable choice, that’s not what VanZant wanted:
“Me re-signing with the UFC would have been the safe choice, but I just wasn’t happy anymore. It’s not ill will toward the UFC, but I just knew I needed something else. I needed a change. I signed with the UFC when I was 19. I had my first fight when I was 20. I need something different. I need to spark my passion again.
“Looking back, I kind of had my mind made up that I was ready to leave the UFC. So when I became a free agent and they came with their offer to re-sign me, I was already moved on. That part of my life is closed, and I was ready for the next chapter, and I didn’t know what it would be.”
Definitely Relatable
Changing jobs can be a nightmare. Changing entire industries is just that much worse. After the UFC, VanZant did a short stint in bare-knuckle boxing, but that didn’t trip her trigger, either.
What did, was OnlyFans – a site known mostly for hardcore and softcore pornography. We here at Bounding Into Sports don’t have an OnlyFans account to check out her content, but we imagine it is in line with some of her spicier ‘Grams:
OK, so why? She told MMA Fighting:
“I already had it in the back on my mind like I love my body, I love being sexy, it’s a big part of who I am, should I do this?” VanZant stated. “I had prior managers that were like, ‘No, no, no, you have to stay away, you’ll lose all your sponsors and no one will ever want to work with you.’
…
“I launched it right before my first BKFC fight. I’m in the car on the way from the press conference back to my hotel, and I logged in, and it had only been live for an hour and I was seeing the subscribers going up, and I think I had 52,000 subscribers at one point. I was showing my husband, and I was like, ‘Oh my word!’ That moment driving back [to the hotel], I was of course extremely excited to fight, but I was like our lives just changed forever. I was like, ‘This is OK, this is going to work out. All the risks are worth it. If I never work with another sponsor again, we’re going to be fine.’”
The real answer may have to do with this: being that good looking and naked on the internet for one single day earned her more money than all her fights put together.
That, and you’d have to be a lunatic to ruin that beautiful face, in this writer’s humble opinion.
