UFC 300: Unbeaten Contender Frustrated by Title Fight Snub

Originally posted on FanNation MMA Knockout | Last updated 2/1/24

One of the UFC’s top talents feels like the promotion robbed her of the chance to fight for a title at UFC 300.

Unbeaten across her ten-fight professional career, Tatiana Suarez currently occupies the #2 spot in the UFC strawweight division and most recently scored a second-round submission victory against former champion Jéssica Andrade.

The strawweight title will be up for grabs at UFC 300 when Weili Zhang faces her countrywoman Yan Xiaonan, and Suarez recently told Ariel Helwani that she did her best to set up a #1 contender bout with Yan.

“I thought I was gonna be able to fight for the title,” Suarez said on The MMA Hour. “Yan got the title shot, but I wouldn’t even have minded if me and her fought for it. I was trying to get that fight. They were trying to get that fight done in October so they could fight in January, and that never even happened.”

Zhang claimed the UFC strawweight belt for the second time when she submitted Carla Esparza last November, and at UFC 292 she put on arguably the most dominant performance of her career in a lopsided decision victory against Amanda Lemos.

Suarez was booked to meet Lemos at UFC 298 before she was forced to withdraw with an injury, but the 33-year-old claims that she could have earned a spot on UFC 300 if the promotion hadn’t tried to rush her into the Yan matchup.

“They were trying to push me to fight a five-round fight within like four weeks or something instead of giving me a proper amount of time to train for a five-round fight…And then they ended up doing [Zhang vs. Yan] in April. I’m like, ‘I could have fought her, I could have fought her in plenty of time.’ They were trying to rush the timeline and everything…I’d be fighting on UFC 300.”

Yan is coming off back-to-back victories, and although the all-Chinese title bout between her and Zhang is a huge fight for the UFC there are plenty of fans that would love to see Suarez put her unbeaten record on the line against “Magnum”.

It doesn’t appear that Suarez’s current injury will keep her on the shelf for too long after she was previously sidelined for nearly four years, and depending on the result of the strawweight title bout at UFC 300 the 33-year-old could still be next in line for her first shot at UFC gold.

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