{"id":633041,"date":"2026-04-28T00:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T00:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/633041\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T00:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T00:54:09","slug":"victor-valenzuela-says-grandmother-predicted-ufc-call-before-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/633041\/","title":{"rendered":"Victor Valenzuela says grandmother predicted UFC call before death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LAS VEGAS \u2013 Victor Valenzuela dedicated his <a href=\"https:\/\/mmajunkie.usatoday.com\/events\/ufc-fight-night-274-sterling-vs-zala\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:UFC Fight Night 274;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;UFC Fight Night 274&quot;}\" class=\"link \">UFC Fight Night 274<\/a> win Saturday to his grandmother, who recently died.<\/p>\n<p>As Valenzuela (14-4 MMA, 1-0 UFC) explained during his post-fight news conference, his grandmother didn&#8217;t get to see him achieve his biggest goal to date. However, somehow she knew it was coming.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When I had my last fight in Japan, I spoke to my grandma, and she told me shad a dream that good news was coming. She didn&#8217;t know what, but good news,&#8221; Valenzuela told MMA Junkie and other reporters through a Spanish-language interpreter. &#8220;She told me, &#8216;Please take care of yourself and stay active, and you never know what can happen.&#8217; Basically she meant don&#8217;t get too big or heavy or getting your weight back. I followed it, and a week later I got a call from my manager, Jason, who says, &#8216;Hey, are you willing to take a fight on short notice in two weeks.&#8217; I put two and two together, and that&#8217;s exactly what my grandma was talking about. I took the fight and took the opportunity, and that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m here now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Valenzuela, 32, defeated seasoned welterweight veteran Max Griffin (20-13 MMA, 8-11 UFC) by unanimous decision at the Meta APEX. The victory was a long time coming for the MMA Masters product, who has been competing in MMA since 2013.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I believed in myself and just wanted to make it seem like it was any other fight,&#8221; Valenzuela said.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>As for what&#8217;s next, Valenzuela doesn&#8217;t think he has the standing to start calling shots quite yet. He only has one UFC fight under his belt.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Honestly I have no plans,&#8221; Valenzuela said. &#8220;I just walked into the company right now. My plan is to at least fight two more times this year and we&#8217;ll see when I start positioning myself in the rankings.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: <a href=\"https:\/\/mmajunkie.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/ufc\/2026\/04\/27\/ufc-vegas-116-victor-valenzuela-grandmother-prediction\/89825047007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Debuting winner says grandmother predicted UFC call before death;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Debuting winner says grandmother predicted UFC call before death&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Debuting winner says grandmother predicted UFC call before death<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS \u2013 Victor Valenzuela dedicated his UFC Fight Night 274 win Saturday to his grandmother, who recently&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,1302,82,36996,236838,236837],"class_list":{"0":"post-633041","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-mma-junkie","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc-fight-night","15":"tag-valenzuela","16":"tag-victor-valenzuela"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633041","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=633041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}