Yankova shrugs off 'sexual tension' comments from MacFarlane

Anastasia Yankova is three fights into her professional MMA career, and she's already drawing outrageous comments from prospective opponents.

She must be doing something right.

The 25-year-old kickboxer will make her second appearance in the Bellator cage when she meets Veta Arteaga at Bellator 161 this Friday in Cedar Park, Texas. Blessed with the looks and personality that have afforded her modeling and TV hosting gigs in her native Russia, Yankova is an easy sell for the promotion, and an easy target for peers.

Fellow flyweight Ilima-Lei MacFarlane called Yankova out in a July interview with MMAjunkie, claiming she was motivated to fight her due to a "hidden sexual tension" between the two women. Earlier this week, she doubled down on that sentiment with a cheeky tweet:

Yankova heard MacFarlane loud and clear, but she's choosing to read between the lines.

"This may come across as a little cocky or self-confident, but her comments are basically just attention-seeking," Yankova told theScore through a translator. "It's very easy to figure out, just look at her followers on Instagram and look at my followers. Look at her growth in followers and my growth in followers, you can tell the difference. So she's just looking for attention."

"I don't blame her. She's just trying to promote herself. I mean, since making that comment more reports have been written about her than ever before and more reporters are asking me about her and she's basically now become a topic of conversation where before nobody cared ... I understand why people are doing it, and while I understand it and I don't blame her for it, I give her A for effort, but I'm not here to indulge it. As far as that whole conversation is concerned, I'm not going to respond to it or get into some Twitter battle. I'm not here to help anybody raise their profiles, I'm just here to work on myself."

If Yankova's first Bellator fight was any indication, she could be well on her way to colliding with MacFarlane in the future. This past April, she made short work of Anjela Pink with an armbar submission that showed she's a legitimate threat on the ground as well as the feet.

Even with a MacFarlane confrontation looming (potentially for an as-of-yet-unannounced flyweight belt), Yankova remains focused on her own growth. For anyone who thinks she's not prepared for the rigors of MMA, she points to her prior kickboxing experience as evidence that a few bumps and bruises won't shake her.

And though some might fixate on her appearance, it's the last thing she's worried about.

"The physical changes the body goes through when training for a fight or just being a fighter, luckily we live in a day and age where doctors can fix everything," said Yankova. "So I'll worry about it when my career is over. My nose has been broken in three different places. I don't think it made me any uglier than I was. When I'm done, I'll fix the nose, I'll fix the ears.

"What's important are the changes that you go through inside. The ones that are not so apparent externally. The growth that you experience as a fighter, as a martial artist, as an athlete, and the life lessons that you learn being a part of this sport outweigh any physical change that may happen because those you can deal with when it's all over."