Meet the fighter who believes she may be ready for Rousey

She speaks calmly and matter-of-factly, but no matter, the words Jessica Eye uses to describe herself are chilling.

Eye is now one of the UFC’s top fighters, and a win Saturday over Miesha Tate at the United Center in Chicago in the co-main event of a card on Fox will get her a shot at the bantamweight championship.

Eye is a light-hearted, easygoing person most of the time, but she changes when she’s about to compete.

Something comes over her, and it is something that was borne of a horrible life experience.

“I’m Jessica Eye on an everyday basis, and she’s a funny, loving, happy-go-lucky person,” she told Yahoo Sports. “But when I’m in the cage, I’m evil. I’m everything I hate. I’m everything I don’t want to be. I’m as evil as I can possibly be. I’m the villain in there. I possess that same thing that [UFC women’s bantamweight champion] Ronda [Rousey] has. Ronda does a great job of turning it on and off. That in my opinion is what identifies a true athlete, and when I step into the cage I’m no longer the same person.

“I’ve been this way my whole life. I was like that in my first fight. I think it was because of the way I was raised. I saw evil at a young age, and I knew what it was and I learned how to channel it. It worked out for me as a fighter.”

Eye said her father, Randy, frequently physically abused her as a child. It didn’t subside, even as she became an adult.

Familial relationships are extraordinarily complex, and Eye said she did what she had to do to survive.

A turning point in her life occurred, she said, when her father hit her when she was 20.

By that point, she’d survived a car accident in which she’d broken her back and was told she may never walk, in addition to the longtime physical abuse.

There were scars aplenty, and the emotional ones, as is often the case, were the most difficult to overcome. But what in most cases would be a horribly difficult moment helped her immensely.

“The last time my father put his hands on me, I was an adult and I was training, and I finally got to the point where I fought back,” Eye said. “And when I fought back, when a 200-and-some-odd-pound man was doing this to me, that kind of opened a door for me as a fighter. I was like, ‘Jess, if you can handle this, and deal with this, then what could a 135-pound woman possibly do to you?’

“I think one of my biggest strengths is that. I have taken a punch from a man, a 250-pound man, and I fought back. I knew what I was made of.”

It left her singularly focused on winning the championship.

Rousey happens to be arguably the sport’s most dominant athlete, but Eye has never been intimidated and doesn’t shrink from the challenge.

UFC president Dana White said the winner of Saturday’s Tate-Eye bout will meet the winner of the Aug. 1 Rousey-Bethe Correia bout, giving Eye a clear path to the championship.

It’s no easy thing, given Tate’s success and Rousey’s dominance. Though Eye doesn’t have the name recognition of Tate, White said he doesn’t dismiss Eye’s chances in the least.

“She’s got great takedown defense, terrific hands and she’s got that special something about her,” White said. “She’s a fighter, man. She’s one of those fighters like I talk about, who is pure fighter. When it’s go time, she’s as tough as there is, and she loves it.”

Her experiences have left her singularly focused. An Eye punch split Leslie Smith’s ear during their fight at UFC 180 in Mexico City, and blood was spurting everywhere.

Smith’s ear was dangling, a sight that was not for the queasy, but Eye never lost focus.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s going to fall off,’ ” Eye said of Smith’s ear. “But I knew I had to keep going. That was my way to win the fight. It was pretty gross, and later, I could hardly believe it. But I had to do what I had to do to win.”

She’s won more often than not and put herself near the top of her division.

She’s overcome more obstacles in her 29 years than most people face in a lifetime, but she isn’t satisfied.

“What my life has taught me is to never give up, never let anyone tell me I can’t do something and to always compete,” she said. “From my first day fighting, I knew about the UFC back then, and all I could think of was of one day, having that gold wrapped around my waist. There weren’t even women in the UFC at that point, but I knew it would happen and my goal from Day 1 was to win that.

“I get chills even now just talking about it. My life has brought me to this point, and I know I have the tools I need. I will never discredit any woman, but I know what I want and I know what I can do. And I’m going to do it.”