Paige VanZant relishes opportunity on new season of 'Dancing with the Stars'

The last time Paige VanZant appeared in public, her face was a bloody, swollen mess, the result of a beating at the hands of Rose Namajunas in an important strawweight bout last December.

It will be a very different side of VanZant viewers see later this year when she appears on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" as one of the Season 22 cast members.

She did competitive dance when she was younger until she said she was burned out on it by the time she was through middle school.

VanZant, who will turn 22 later this month, is taking a brief break from fighting to appear on the popular reality series. And though she has a background in dance and her mother owned a dance studio, her motivation for appearing goes beyond just what the show will do for her career.

"I'm so fortunate to get this opportunity to show the world I'm a lot more than just a fighter," she said. "I really love the thought that I get to show that female fighters, and all fighters, really, are so much more than what you see in the cage. There is so much more to us than that.

"I know this is going to help my career in every way, and it's going to be a great experience. But I'm really looking at this as an opportunity to show young girls they can do absolutely anything they want. I've shown that through fighting, but everyone knows that side of me. They just know me as this fighter and I want to show that there is this whole other side of me. I hope that the young girls will see you don't have to identify as just one thing."

VanZant said producers reached out to her manager to gauge her interest, and after an interview in Los Angeles, things escalated quickly.

Though the show's schedule is such that it means she probably won't fight again until July at the earliest, that's not a bad thing, she said.

"I was planning to take longer than normal off from fighting, not because of how physical the fight was but because of the fact I lost," VanZant said. "It had nothing to do with being injured or problems with my body or anything. It was just that I lost and I think I need to completely change things up. I didn't want to go into a fight camp the way I went into my last one.

"I wanted something totally different. I wanted to reevaluate myself and reevaluate my skill and kind of collect myself. The show is going to give me the perfect chance to do that. I'm actually having better training now than I ever did."