Tatiana Suarez hopes she punched her ticket to a title shot Saturday. But at minimum, she knows she’s now in the mix.
Suarez (10-0 MMA, 7-0 UFC) put on a dominant performance and submitted former women’s strawweight champion Jessica Andrade (24-12 MMA, 15-10 UFC) in the second round of the UFC on ESPN 50 co-main event in Nashville, Tenn.
Suarez, who won Season 23 of “The Ultimate Fighter” and was a rising contender before she lost nearly four years to injury layoffs, has back-to-back wins starting with her return earlier this year, and both were bonus-winning submissions.
Despite the accoladed resume Andrade possesses, Suarez said she thought she could submit her.
“I think where I shine, obviously, is I’m a very good grappler, and I think she she turns her back and I have a lot of submissions – I have a tight squeeze,” Suarez said at her post-fight news conference. “I can pull things off that a lot of women can’t because I have wrestled my whole entire life. I had a really good front headlock when I was wrestling and a lot of men tell me how tight my squeeze is. So I was I was happy that I could get a submission win – another guillotine on my record. I’m just really excited about it. I felt like I could submit her.”
Suarez said having Andrade on her resume in the win column will be one more thing to give her career a confidence boost. It seems like she’s surrounded with people who also are trying to do the same.
When she abandoned going after an early takedown in the name of striking, some may have thought it was a risk.
“I’m just really excited about this one because I think a lot of people fear her on the feet,” Suarez said. “That’s where she has her most success. I decided to strike with her a lot more than I do in all of my other fights. If you watch all my fights, I always get a takedown within the first minute of every fight I’ve ever had. I didn’t do that this fight.
“My brother was like, ‘Stick to your game plan.’ My game plan is always whatever comes natural to me. And for some reason, it felt natural to me. I felt like I had the better footwork. I felt like I had the better strikes. I feel like I’m dangerous, too. People told me, ‘Remember: You’re the scary one. She’s feared, but so are you.'”
Now Suarez hopes she might be in position to ask for a 115-pound title shot. Champion Zhang Weili is scheduled to put the belt on the line in less than two weeks at UFC 292 in Boston.
But don’t imagine Suarez having a lack of confidence if she was asked to face the winner. She’s already got a flyweight win over current champ Alexa Grasso, as well as this Andrade win to buoy her.
“I think I match up well against them. I think I match up well against everybody,” she said. “I think that I’m going to be a world champion. I think I’m the best in the world, and I’m going for that strap. So whatever they want to give me, I’ll make it happen. But I do believe that I deserve to fight for the title. I don’t know who’s going to win, but I want the winner.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC on ESPN 50.
