and the shuttering of the women\u2019s strawweight division<\/a>\u2014and lack of opponents to face in this early stage of her MMA career, Basilio decided to part ways with the company and seek a deal with LFA instead.<\/p>\n\u201cI spoke with some people and decided to end my contract with ONE Championship to follow a path that would take me to the UFC,\u201d Basilio said. \u201cI really believe in my potential, my dedication, my work, in what I\u2019ve been doing daily.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sao Paulo native had experience in other forms of martial arts early before deciding pursuing a career in jiu-jitsu, training Muay Thai and boxing as a teenager. Basilio first trained MMA under vale tudo veteran Udi Lima in Sao Paulo, and joined The Fighting Nerds team in 2024 to finally kick off the transition to MMA.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been really cool and challenging for me,\u201d Basilio said. \u201cMy focus is to get to the UFC, so LFA is a big gateway, an incredible promotion that has revealed many athletes. It\u2019s truly a showcase for the UFC, it is the biggest stage in MMA. That\u2019s my focus, to train, win fight by fight and gain experience. I don\u2019t want it to be something like, \u2018If a [UFC] contract shows up tomorrow, let\u2019s jump in.\u2019 No, I think everything has the right timing. I\u2019ve been preparing myself so that when I get there I can truly follow a path to reach the belt and become champion of the division.\u201d<\/p>\n
Basilio has shared mats with a long list of athletes who later tested themselves in MMA cages and rings, including future UFC fighters Bia Mesquita, Talita Alencar, and Jacqueline Amorim, but never had the chance to grapple a big name who later became an inspiration in her move to MMA.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have followed Mackenzie [Dern\u2019s] career for many years,\u201d Basilio said of the current UFC strawweight champion. \u201cI remember that my last year as a brown belt was her last year competing as a black belt at the [IBJJF] Worlds. She moved to MMA after that so I didn\u2019t have the opportunity to fight her. She was someone I really wanted to face when I was in colored belts because she was in my weight class, she was a superchampion, so I used to watch and admire her a lot. I wanted to reach her level but I didn\u2019t have that opportunity in jiu-jitsu because she moved to MMA as soon as I got my black belt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Basilio is still 1-0 in the sport and hopes to close the year with a 6-0 record, and fighting Dern one day in the UFC \u201ccould happen, for sure.\u201d She dreams big, but knows the road to becoming a well-rounded athlete isn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n
Again, Dern serves as inspiration.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was always very good in jiu-jitsu,\u201d Basilio said. \u201cAt the beginning, in striking, it was a lot of wild overhands and then go to jiu-jitsu however possible [laughs], but she improved and today she is the current champion of the division. That\u2019s really cool, and I think it\u2019s a very good reference for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWatching the whole journey of these girls inspires me a lot and makes me believe more and more that I\u2019m on the right path,\u201d she continued, citing Mesquita, Alencar, and Amorim. \u201cI know what it was like to be where they were in jiu-jitsu. I\u2019m also one of the best athletes in my division in jiu-jitsu, I was an eight-time world champion across all belts, twice at black belt. Watching them, you see that it\u2019s possible. I\u2019m working and I know it\u2019s only a matter of time for me to be very good both on the feet and on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bianca Basilio is eager to take the MMA world by storm after building a name for herself in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85],"class_list":["post-568642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568642","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=568642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}