What a submission! Vanessa Demopoulos is one of the top new rising female fighters in the UFC, and she picked up her first win at strawweight against an opponent who had never been defeated. 

Demopoulos showed up to UFC 270 with an exciting second fight and an even more interesting back story. She was facing off against Silvana Juarez Gomez and got dropped early, nearly finished by ground-and-pound but then went into Jiu-Jitsu mode and controlled positions on both sides through clever defense before employing an armlock technique that quickly caused her opponent to tap.

“When I came to it, I had no idea I was out sort of, like I had no clue she was ground and pounding me until after the fight and someone told me,” Demopoulos said to the media. “One second I am on my feet and the next thing I remember is I was doing jiu-jitsu so I thought maybe I took her down, but I didn’t care as the focus was getting the arm and getting the finish.”

It’s no surprise that Demopoulos pulled off an impressive victory, as she spent months training for this fight and had been talking about earning her first UFC win every single day of camp. What’s even more meaningful, is that just before the fight, she made a tough decision to quit her job as a stripper to do MMA full-time.

This means that while she was the former LFA strawweight champion, Demopoulos was still stripping as her main source of income, which brings up issues about fighter pay which has become a growing concern and topic of debate as of late.

“I cried but I manifested that, I wrote it down every day, I made the cover photo on my phone saying I will get the $50K bonus,” Demopoulos said. “It’s even crazier that I was able to get it on this card I was on with two title fights and all these good fights…I can’t even put it into words. I’ve been dancing since I was 18-years-old and I knew I needed to put it to the side to focus on fighting,” Demopoulos continued. “I had put on my whiteboard, bust your ass for thousands instead of shaking it for dollars. That was so powerful to me. I didn’t tell anyone I quit this time until after the fight, and I’m officially done which is awesome.”

Vanessa Demopoulos might not be still celebrating her first UFC win, but the post-fight interview, where she jumped into Joe Rogan’s arms during her post-fight Octagon interview, has already gone viral.  In fact, she says it was planned that way because of how many new followers on social media this event received. “I wanted that, I planned on that. My plan in my post-fight interview was to jump in Joe Rogan’s arms and he was with it, it was awesome. I wanted that,” Demopoulos said.

If there are two takeaways we should gather from Vanessa Demopoulos’s UFC 270 performance, it’s that what you focus on grows and you can manifest anything that you believe in by taking massive action.

Vanessa hopes to get back into the ring quickly and is hoping that the UFC offers her a fight on the Columbus Ohio card next month in March. “I lived in Columbus for six years so I want to be on that card. I’m going to call my manager to hopefully get me on that card,” Demopoulos said.

So what do you guys think about the ex-stripper turned full-time MMA rising women’s strawweight contender in the UFC? Joe Rogan called her a “firecracker,” “super fun” and said he had a blast with her in the cage. We agree, She’s going to be a new rising star in the UFC to watch in 2022. 

Check out her moment with Joe Rogan at UFC 270