Athletes
Ivana Petrovic Eyes Best Performance To Date
Flyweight Meets Juliana Miller At UFC Des Moines Saturday, May 3
It’s tough to be a mixed martial arts fighter. It’s even tougher when the country you live in doesn’t recognize the sport. But that’s not going to stop Ivana Petrovic, who has been living and training in Norway, where MMA is not legal, for the last decade.
If that sounds ludicrous in this day and age, consider that France just legalized the sport in 2020, and Norway just lifted its ban on professional boxing in 2014. So there’s a fight still to be had, but Petrovic and her peers are up for it.
“Oh my God, yes,” said Petrovic, who faces Juliana Miller this Saturday on the UFC Fight Night card in Des Moines, Iowa. “Everybody else is talking about that, and we have groups, and the MMA community is together here to make it legal, but it's really difficult. And the problem is that people who are in politics don't understand MMA rules and they think it's too brutal. Even I think boxing is more brutal because you can be knocked down and then you come up again and again and again. So I think the problem is that they don't understand MMA and we are trying to show them. We were having a meeting with some politicians that want to legalize MMA and we were having a seminar for them and they were doing some MMA rounds with us, and they really liked it. But the problem is it's not so many politicians who are interested to legalize MMA.”
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It's things like this that other fighters take for granted, but not Petrovic, a 30-year-old flyweight who is determined not just to become a UFC world champion, but to one day see Norwegian fighters have a place to train and compete in their home country. And while the fight to legalize rages on, Petrovic does have a career to worry about, so whether she trains at home, in Las Vegas, or revisits her heritage by working in Croatia, she’s willing to make sacrifices, along with her husband and coach Sasa, to get to where she wants to go.
“It's kind of difficult, but me and my husband found out how to do that,” she said. “We were traveling around to other countries to fight and I'm lucky because it's legal to train and we have really good gyms here and good people that train here. But yeah, it's not legal to fight here, so we were traveling outside of the country to do that.”
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It’s inconvenient and costly, but the work has been good enough for Petrovic to go from the regional scene to a UFC contract in just six fights. And while her three-fight run in the big show has resulted in a submission win over Liang Na and decision losses to Luana Carolina and Jamey-Lyn Horth, she’s confident that this weekend’s meeting with Miller will result in her best performance to date.
“To be honest, I could fight anybody now, because now this is my last fight on the contract and it is time to show myself,” Petrovic said. “It's time to show that I belong there and no matter who they give me, I feel I'm so much better at fighting than I was first fighting in the UFC. I was kind of blind with all those lights and everything, but now it feels like home and now it's my time to do my best and the show that I belong there.”
Las Vegas was her home for two months this time around, and she’s thankful for the work she got with renowned striking coach Jimmy Gifford and the rounds she put in with the likes of flyweight champion Valentina Shevchenko, Joselyne Edwards and Pannie Kianzad.
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“I was training really hard there with girls and that's something that I don't have at home,” she said. “I don't have girl sparring partners on that level. I think that helped me a lot to improve and to believe more in myself because when you train with boys, you never know. But when you go there and you test yourself, you're like, ‘Oh my God. Yeah, I'm good.”
In her three UFC fights, the world has seen that Petrovic is good. It doesn’t hurt that she also has the seal of approval and an open invitation to train from one of the icons of the sport, Mirko Cro Cop.
“Yeah, I trained with Cro Cop, he is my friend for years,” she said. “The first time I was at his seminar, it was 2014. I didn't train MMA at that time, but I really wanted to start to train MMA. I was training kickboxing first. So we met and yeah, I really like him. I was watching his fights since I was kid with my dad and then I met him for the first time and after that we become friends on Facebook and I'm always welcome to train with him. So I'm probably going to train with him again this summer.”
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When she does, it is with the expectation that she will visit Croatia with a win over Miller and a new UFC contract. And given all she’s been through to reach this point in her career, do you want to doubt her? She must really love this fighting stuff.
“It's hard,” said Petrovic. “But MMA is my biggest motivation. I really love this. I love to be in the cage. I love to fight. And that's the thing; I love this so much that I'm really ready to sacrifice everything for this.”
UFC Fight Night: Sandhagen vs Figueiredo took place live from Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, Iowa on May 3, 2025. See the final Prelim & Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC FIGHT PASS!
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