{"id":209404,"date":"2025-10-13T08:30:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T08:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/209404\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T08:30:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T08:30:09","slug":"bia-mesquita-dominates-ufc-debut-at-ufc-rio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/209404\/","title":{"rendered":"Bia Mesquita dominates UFC debut at UFC Rio"},"content":{"rendered":"

You only get one Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) debut!<\/p>\n

Only one athlete made her Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) debut in \u201cMarvelous City\u201d yesterday (Sat., Oct. 11, 2025) at UFC Rio<\/a> inside Farmasi Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.<\/p>\n

UFC Rio\u2019s lone rookie turned heads with a dominant performance, so now that the dust has settled, let\u2019s grade her debut below:<\/p>\n

Mesquita entered fight week as the biggest betting favorite<\/a> on the card (-650<\/a>), and she fought exactly like it. She dominated Irina Alekseeva from start to finish, battering her on the mat before finally locking up a rear-naked choke for the submission win (watch highlights<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Heading in, I said the only real concern<\/a> for Mesquita was her raw striking, and while she threw a few looping punches early, her elite grappling quickly took over.<\/p>\n

In the first round, she was a bit hesitant at first, but once she threw an overhand right into a clinch, it was all downhill for Alekseeva. Mesquita converted that into a takedown, transitioned straight to mount, and unleashed brutal ground-and-pound \u2014 punches, elbows and even a few borderline 12-6 shots while threatening a scarf choke. She easily could\u2019ve earned a first round stoppage if not for Alekseeva\u2019s toughness.<\/p>\n

By round two \u2014 with 10-8s across all three judges\u2019 scorecards \u2014 Mesquita had enough. She hit a clean double-leg takedown, passed guard, took the back and sank in the choke<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For a UFC debut, it was about as perfect as you can get \u2014 complete dominance mixed with relentless aggression. She\u2019s still raw, and her striking will likely cause problems against top-tier competition, but that\u2019s a conversation for another day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You only get one Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) debut! Only one athlete made her Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,33601,638,82,37644,702,7788],"class_list":["post-209404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-on-espn-fight-night","tag-ufc-news","tag-ufc-results"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}