What if?
Tatiana Suarez has long been in danger of becoming one of MMA’s foremost examples for one of the sporting world’s worst questions. But that changes Saturday at UFC 312 in Sydney, Australia, when Suarez enters her long-awaited, ever-elusive first title fight opposite UFC strawweight champion Zhang Weili.
The undefeated Suarez (10-0) put the 115-pound division on notice upon her immediate arrival in the UFC in 2016, winning her way through “The Ultimate Fighter 23.” Dominance has been the name of the game for Suarez, a one-time Olympic hopeful who boasts an excruciatingly intense wrestling game. Unfortunately, Suarez’s body has often been her own worst enemy, producing setback after setback to varying degrees throughout her competitive life, from the cancer diagnosis that derailed her Olympic dreams to endless cavalcade of injuries that have more often than not stalled her UFC run.
Many expected Suarez, 34, to be a UFC champion by this point — not just competing in her first title fight, but reigning over the division as its undisputed queen. But then there was the career-threatening neck injury in 2019. Suarez returned without missing a beat to submit Montana De La Rosa and former champion Jessica Andrade in 2023, but once the ball got rolling again, Suarez suffered another knee injury in 2024 that sidelined her all over again until this weekend’s big moment in the Australian sun.
“It kind of sucked that I wasn’t able to compete,” Suarez told Uncrowned of her 2024. “I was ready fairly soon after. I had hurt my knee in February. They didn’t catch it the first time, so that’s why I just kept training with it and training with it. It was really hurt. I was like, ‘Man, I just know that this isn’t right. There’s something wrong with it.’ Then they found out around, I think it was April. Then I had it fixed in April, and then [longtime partner Patchy Mix] had his fight in May, we got engaged.
“I was pretty much ready after that, but the division was so tied up and everything was like that. Weili had just fought [in April] but she wasn’t ready to fight [again], and they thought that that was going to happen but it didn’t happen. I was hoping for the Sphere [in September], the Sphere didn’t happen. Then I had that fight booked with Virna [Jandiroba for December] and that didn’t go through, just because I feel like the UFC had bigger plans for all of us. So now here we are: Sydney, Australia.”
Injury adversity is nothing new in combat sports. More often than not, it’s whether those adversities can be overcome at the highest levels that makes all the difference. Take former UFC champions Georges St-Pierre and Dominick Cruz as the peak examples. Both overcame significant ACL tears — multiple for Cruz, among other setbacks — during their reigns and remained championship-quality fighters afterward.
There’s an argument to be made that injuries can actually enhance an athlete’s legacy if success follows. Suarez agrees, thus still holds herself to a similar standard as those all-time greats regardless of her many setbacks. She knows she has a chance to accomplish something even St-Pierre and Cruz didn’t.
“I feel like I’m a little different just because I am undefeated, I am such a dominant fighter in my fights,” Suarez said. “So I think that makes me a little bit even more so [tied to the injury narratives].”
Either way, Suarez collides with Zhang at a unique time in the champion’s career. While Suarez has been sidelined, Zhang has improved her wrestling tremendously. If the matchup happened before 2022, Zhang would’ve been a sizable better underdog. Even now, she sits as only a -125 favorite, per BetMGM.
Challenges on the wrestling mats are nothing new for Suarez, who’s taken on legendary competitors since she was 19 years old — like three-time Olympic champion Saori Yoshida, who gave Suarez her final wrestling loss in 2010. All these years later, the hyper-competitive Suarez still wishes she could have a rematch to “kick Yoshida’s ass all over the mat.” That’s the fighting spirit Suarez possesses.
So in that sense, she’s glad to see Zhang’s improvement in her area of expertise. Suarez waited her whole adult life for this opportunity, and at UFC 312, she’s hell-bent on making good on the moment.
“As a wrestler, I like it because it plays into my game,” Suarez said of Zhang’s improvements during her own two-year layoff. “Even if she decides that she doesn’t want to wrestle me, it doesn’t matter because I can still wrestle her. And if she wants to wrestle me, then that would be good because I’m a very good defensive wrestler. I have a lot of attacks, and I just feel like our styles match up very well for me.
“I don’t know what her tactics are going to be. Maybe she’s going to want to also wrestle me too. I think that could be a thing, and that’s OK too, because I’m very good everywhere, especially on the ground. I’m also very good on the feet as well. So I think she’ll be very surprised by my movement and footwork, and I am very rangy and use my range very well. I have very good, long-range tools, and I do have a lot of power as well. So yeah, I think she’ll be very surprised on how great I am all over the place, even in the clinch. I have good knees. I’m very, very aggressive. I think that that’s where she also gets people too.
“She’s very aggressive with people that cannot take that, and I can take it and give it back too, so I feel like it makes for a good fight. She’s not going to bully me around the cage, I’ll tell you that. So we’re going to go out there, it’s going to be a great fight and it’s going to steal the show.”
Tatiana Suarez,UFC,Zhang Weili,Dominick Cruz
