Joanne Calderwood was potentially one step away from a shot at flyweight gold.

She fell short in a unanimous-decision loss to Katlyn Chookagian at UFC 238, and she attributes that loss due to a lack of focus. On the same night, flyweight champion Valentina Shevchenko defended her title against Jessica Eye, in what resulted in a devastating first-round finish in favor of the titleholder.

And sharing the card with the champion diverted the attention away from Calderwood’s task at hand.

“So my last fight, I felt like I was focusing on oh maybe I can get the title shot,” Calderwood told reporters, including MMA Junkie, on Tuesday. “Like we were on the same card and I focused too much on the possibility and yeah it’s good to have that in the back of your mind but I feel like sometimes it can take the focus away of your goal.”

“The goal in MMA is yeah to get to the title belt but it’s so hard to get there,” Calderwood added. “So if you’re just looking there, it’s like all these little mini battles, all these little fights that you have before that, you have to be prepared for those and to perform at the end of the day to get the win, to get there.”

Calderwood (13-4 MMA, 5-4 UFC) is already back on the horse. She takes on the surging Andrea Lee (11-2 MMA, 3-0 UFC) at UFC 242 in Abu Dhabi, which could put her right where she left off. This time, the goal is to focus on Sept. 7.

“Just keep getting better and performing on the night,” Calderwood said. “It’s like we only get two, three fights a year and those two or three nights, you have to turn up so it’s like getting everything together in your training but also the mentality of turning up on those nights and getting the ‘W’ because the ‘W’ will get you there.”

With champion Shevchenko cruising past top contenders, it is unknown who can actually give her a challenge at 125 pounds. But Calderwood says with the division so new, you never know who could be the one.

“Yeah because it’s such a new division, we’ve got a lot of girls going down in weight and then we’ve got a lot of girls that came up and then now even going up to bantamweight so it’s kind of a bit of a cluster (expletive) right now,” Calderwood said. “Like with people moving and it being a new division but I see some exciting matches, especially like girls coming through that aren’t even ranked so I feel like you just never know who’s going to be the dark horse.”

The former strawweight Calderwood is not ruling out a possible move back down to 115. The move to Las Vegas, where she has constant access to the UFC Performance Institute, has taught her a lot about her body and nutrition.

“Yeah they (PI) want me to stay at flyweight but I feel like each camp, my weight is getting lower and lower,” Calderwood said. “Obviously I’m taking each fight as they come, but it’s always going to be in the back of my mind to go back to strawweight because I feel like when I was there, I wasn’t doing it properly. I wasn’t being disciplined. These guys have educated me and I was like I was doing it all wrong.”