In the seven months since Ilima-Lei Macfarlane became a world champion, not much has changed.

Except for one thing.

“I know this sounds kind of bad, but I feel like my inner circle grew smaller,” said Macfarlane, who will defend her 125-pound flyweight title against Alejandra Lara in the main event of Bellator 201 on Friday in Temecula, Calif.

“I feel like I’m a pretty nice person, but lately — and I don’t know if (because) I’m cutting weight right now — I have no problem telling someone to (expletive) off. I don’t know if it came with the belt.”

The Punahou alumna became the fourth fighter from Hawaii to hold a world title in a major mixed martial arts organization with her fifth-round submission of Emily Ducote in November.

Macfarlane became the first female world champion in Bellator and also owns the organization’s record for active winning streak, most wins and most stoppage victories among female fighters.

She quickly climbed the rankings since her Bellator debut in 2015, but now has a different outlook with a title around her waist.

“I like to fight two to three times a year, but now with the belt as a champion, it’s about longevity,” Macfarlane said. “It’s about keeping the belt for as long as you can and being able to do this sport for as long as you can.

“My career has gotten to the point that I’ve established myself as a fighter and I don’t need to be fighting four or five times in a year.”

It’s been a different road to the main event for her opponent, the 23-year-old Lara, whose only fight in Bellator was an impressive submission victory over Lena Ovchynnikova in December.

Lara has won fights in five different smaller promotions and has quickly developed a reputation as a top-level striker.

“She comes from a camp with a lot of top high-level training partners and in my experiences, having female training partners and such high-level partners is crucial,” Macfarlane said. “I’ve never fought someone with her style so we’ll see if she is my kryptonite.”

Although Lara is five years younger, her professional career has lasted twice as long as Macfarlane, who only turned pro in 2015.

Despite her relatively short time as a known commodity in mixed martial arts, Macfarlane has already used her fame to help better the world outside of the cage.

She recently set up the Ilimanator Scholarship for Native American and Native Hawaiian adolescent females to further their education.

She has been a mentor for InterTribal Youth since 2015 and went to a cultural exchange program in Panama last summer that had a lasting impact.

“We spent a lot of time with indigenous groups and spent time in their different villages and it’s just a completely different way of life,” Macfarlane said. “One of the chief’s daughters had always wanted to do an exchange in San Diego but they couldn’t afford the cost, so we came together to try to figure out a solution.”

Macfarlane was in Panama when she found out she was going to fight for Bellator’s first female world title later that year.

She promised if she won the belt she would find a way to help girls from the village visit the United States.

This year, they raised enough money to hand out five scholarships and hope to add to that number.

“Native women and girls face the highest rates of violence. There are no recorded statistics of indigenous women in North America being murdered,” Macfarlane said. “Women and girls are overlooked in some cases and as someone with native blood, I want to reach out and help these people. There’s a movement going on and I want to be a part of it.”

For more information on the scholarship and the work Macfarlane is doing, click here.