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Brett Okamoto
When Tatiana Suarez challenges Zhang Weili for the UFC strawweight championship Saturday, one thing she won’t lack is self-belief. Because if Suarez did not truly believe she was the best fighter on the planet, there is simply no way she could have endured what it’s taken for her to get here.
At UFC 312 inside Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, Suarez (10-0) will finally realize an opportunity she has worked her entire life for. The undefeated 34-year-old title challenger has been one of the most dominant forces in women’s MMA and wrestling over the past two decades, but she has never competed for a UFC championship or an Olympic medal — through no fault of her own.
She was tracking toward an appearance for Team USA at the Summer Games in 2012 when her wrestling career was cut short by a neck injury that revealed Suarez had thyroid cancer. With treatment, Suarez overcame the diagnosis. Then, she was in line for a UFC title shot in 2019 before injury once again robbed her of the opportunity. Throughout her athletic career, she has defeated three UFC champions and an Olympic gold medalist. Her résumé is undeniably that of a champion, just without the actual championships.
“I would say that I’m naturally an impatient person,” Suarez told ESPN. “But because of the things I’ve had to go through, I’ve had to learn to be patient. So, I guess the universe knew what I needed.”
If patience has been the lesson, the universe has been a relentless instructor to Suarez.
There are some great examples in the UFC right now, of champions who took a long path to their first title shot. It took flyweight Alexandre Pantoja 12 fights across six years to earn his opportunity. Welterweight Belal Muhammad needed eight years and a nine-fight winning streak to get his. And bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili has been outspoken about the difficult path he took to the belt, a road that included three consecutive bouts against former champions.
The difference in Suarez’s story, which has been unfolding in the UFC for nearly eight years now, is that most of her journey has taken place in a physical rehab facility instead of the Octagon. Due to serious neck and knee injuries, she has only managed to fight three times since 2019. At one point, she went nearly four years without a single appearance — and that absence came at the exact time she would have fought for the title.
“The hardest part has been knowing she’s the best in the world, and having to sit there, watching fights when we knew she could have been the champion,” Patchy Mix, Suarez’s fiancé and Bellator MMA bantamweight champion, told ESPN. “She could have been the champion in 2019. I remember the title fight between Rose Namajunas and Weili, when Rose won by knockout [in 2021]. That was right after she injured her knee.
“We were shocked by the knockout, because we’re also just super fans of this sport. But I remember Tatiana looking at the screen, just saying she could beat both of them. And I remember telling her, ‘You will get your shot.'”
The closest Suarez has been to a UFC title so far was in 2019, when she defeated Nina Nunes at UFC 238 in Chicago. In her postfight interview with Joe Rogan, Suarez called for a title shot in her next bout, and even referred to the opportunity as a “long time coming.” She had already beaten one former champion in Carla Esparza at that time. The reference to “a long time coming” was a nod to her missing the Olympics and feeling like opponents were ducking her in the UFC.
Before that fight, however, Suarez had injured her neck while training, and exacerbated the injury in the first round against Nunes. She fought two rounds that night with numbness in her face and left arm. It ultimately took two years to rehabilitate her neck to the point she could fight again. During that time, she would undergo more than three hours of stretching her neck, every day. And by the end of the rehab process, her already overdue opportunity of fighting for a championship was gone.
“My neck was so bad, I couldn’t even roll [jiu-jitsu] with children,” Suarez said. “I was trying to swim, and it was like, ‘S—, swimming hurts my neck, this is severe.’ So, I rehabilitated for two years. And then I hurt my knee.”
Suarez’s mother, Lisa Padilla, remembers everything about the day in July 2021 when her daughter injured her knee. For her, after a day that bad, it’s like every detail sticks with you.
She remembers Suarez finally recovering from the neck injury and even booking a fight against Roxanne Modafferi for that September. Suarez was in California, already in preparation for her return to the Octagon in the fall. The day the injury occurred while training, Padilla already had plans to meet Suarez at the gym. The following day, they were going to take her little sister to Disneyland, and the movie theater at night.
There was a celebratory feel toward Suarez’s life at that time. The neck injury was a serious hurdle to clear. Padilla had even secretly wanted her to retire. She listened to doctors describe what could happen if the injury worsened and thought it was time for her daughter to focus on something else. She never said anything, however, because she knew there was no chance Suarez would walk away.
It had taken two long, difficult years to come back from the neck injury suffered before the Nunes fight, but Suarez had done it — and, of course, Padilla felt such relief that her daughter’s dream hadn’t been stolen by injury once again. And then came the knee injury.
“That was the day I worried about her most,” Padilla told ESPN. “I think she knew that it was bad. People were trying to tell her it wasn’t, but I could see terror on her face.”
Suarez underwent surgery for a full ACL, MCL and LCL reconstruction and meniscus repair. Followed by two more years of rehabilitation. She did not return to competition until February 2023. She’d earned a UFC title shot in June 2019, and ultimately didn’t fight again until a nontitle bout 44 months later, in a different weight class, flyweight, so she didn’t have to cut as much weight after so much time off.
In the time Suarez was away, there were six strawweight title fights in the UFC. Had she been healthy, Suarez believes she would have won every one of them. On Saturday, she’ll get a chance to prove it.
Zhang, of Hebei, China, is not only the UFC’s 115-pound champion, she is ranked ESPN’s No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in women’s MMA. For the first time in her UFC career, Suarez is a betting underdog.
Padilla says she’s always nervous when her daughter fights. It’s a stressful experience for a mother. But on this one, she’s just eager for it to start. There will be a sense of relief when the fight is underway because it will be the opportunity they’ve all waited on for so long. She believes getting this chance at a world championship will afford her daughter peace. It will afford “a rest for her soul.”
The outcome of the fight itself, that’s never been in question. To her loved ones, Suarez has always been a champion, all she ever needed was the opportunity to make it official.
“I think I can dominate anybody in the world, because I am relentless,” Suarez said.
Relentless and, thanks to the universe, patient.