Amanda Lemos and Tatiana Suarez came up short in their attempts to dethrone UFC strawweight queen Zhang Weili, and Lemos sees their upcoming clash in San Antonio as a chance to re-insert her name in the conversation for a future title contention.<\/p>\n
Lemos collides with Suarez this weekend at Noche UFC, a match-up she has hoped for many years now. Suarez was treated as a future champion ever since she joined the promotion after winning The Ultimate Fighter in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cTatiana is a tough athlete,\u201d Lemos said. \u201cShe was seen as the boogeywoman, she was undefeated, and is now coming off a loss. But I expected this fight for a long time. In fact, ever since I entered the UFC, I already envisioned this fight because she was in her prime, and then the injuries started.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suarez lost to Zhang in February, the last title defense for the Chinese star before moving up to challenge Valentina Shevchenko for flyweight glory in November. Lemos, who is 2-1 since her defeat to Weili in 2023, wonders how Suarez will return after her first MMA loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe definitely feel a bit more pressure when we\u2019re coming off a loss because no one wants to get two losses in a row in their record,\u201d Lemos said. \u201cI\u2019m back now and we\u2019re going for my second straight victory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lemos said she\u2019s also curious to see how Suarez will perform inside the cage after battling so many injuries over the years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think she\u2019s throwing herself more with the takedowns,\u201d Lemos said. \u201cNot sure if it\u2019s because of the knee, but I don\u2019t see her shooting for takedowns with the knee on the ground anymore. But Weili has done a great job defending the takedowns, so we\u2019re trying to work that as well. We got a lot of stuff from the Weili fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has great wrestling, that\u2019s what she does best. We\u2019re mapping out her game and following every step she takes. We will impose our game in every takedown she attempts. We\u2019ll be one step ahead of her to do a good job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite Suarez\u2019s decorated wrestling background, which has given her seven straight UFC victories between 2016 and 2023, Lemos said she brings no surprising elements to the match.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe game plan is to always defend the takedowns because there\u2019s nothing new with this fight, right?\u201d Lemos said \u201cShe will try to take me down, and I will try to defend. There\u2019s no secret for anyone. I\u2019ll definitely go there to frustrate her game, defend the takedowns and try to finish the fight as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amanda Lemos and Tatiana Suarez came up short in their attempts to dethrone UFC strawweight queen Zhang Weili,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-140760","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}