Sophie Cunningham had never been to a UFC fight in person before Saturday night. And by the end of it, she’d walked the octagon as a ring girl in front of thousands at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The Indiana Fever guard pulled it off on a whim after a quick conversation with UFC president Dana White. She was just there to watch the fights. Then she wasn’t.
“Dana came over to say what’s up, and I was like, ‘Hey, if you need a ring girl, let me know.’ He’s like, ‘All right, first round of the Paddy fight. No, seriously,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, God!’” Cunningham told Forbes Sports’ Tony East after the event. “It was so much fun though. It was a great environment.”
There was no rehearsal. No time to practice holding the card or walking the right way. Cunningham just went out there and did it with help from the actual ring girls.
“At the end of the day, you pull the card up and you turn left. Hopefully, I could do that. But the ring girls, actually, the real ones, they were helping me. It was fun. They were like, ‘You have to have a little personality, a little sass to it.’ It was a good time,” she said.
Her teammate Caitlin Clark loved it. Clark said the moment gave the WNBA more visibility and showed that players can shine outside of basketball too.
Cunningham also talked about the value of doing random stuff like this during a long WNBA season. The Fever had a day off in Vegas before playing the Aces on Sunday, so she figured why not.
The whole thing was spontaneous. No plan. No prep. Just a player asking a question, getting a yes, and making it work.
Two days later, Cunningham was back on the court in a Fever uniform. But for one night she was holding a round card in the UFC. And she seemed to have a blast doing it.
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