Athletes
Amanda Lemos Wants To Make History
With UFC Gold In Her Sights, Amanda Lemos Sees The Start Of A Historic Championship Legacy At UFC 292: Sterling vs O’Malley
Amanda Lemos expects to fulfill her destiny at UFC 292: Sterling vs O’Malley.
Fighting in the co-main event against strawweight champion Zhang Weili, the 36-year-old Brazilian doesn’t just see August 19 as the day her dreams come true. She sees it as the logical end point of the mixed martial arts journey she started a decade ago.
“Ever since I realized that’s what I wanted for my life, becoming the champion has always been on my mind,” Lemos told UFC.com. “As soon as I decided to be an MMA athlete, I knew I’d be the champion one day.”
Order UFC 292: Sterling vs O'Malley
There’s self-belief, and then there’s the task of validating it through results, and when Lemos started her professional career with five consecutive first-round finishes, she had all the proof she needed.
Zhang vs Lemos Co-Main Event Preview | UFC 292
Unlock MORE of your inner combat sports fan with UFC Fight Pass! Fighting is what we live for. And no one brings you MORE live fights, new shows, and events across multiple combat sports from around the world. With a never-ending supply of fighting in every discipline, there’s always something new to watch. Leave it to the world’s authority in MMA to bring you the Ultimate 24/7 platform for MORE combat sports, UFC Fight Pass!
Zhang vs Lemos Co-Main Event Preview | UFC 292
/
It’s why she wasn’t rattled after suffering a TKO loss in her UFC debut and why she was able to reel off five wins in a row afterward. It’s also why her submission loss to Jéssica Andrade at the precipice of title contention didn’t derail her rise to this opportunity.
She simply racked up two more finishes in the proceeding seven months to establish herself as the person to challenge China’s first champion for the belt.
UFC 292 COUNTDOWN: Full Episode | Sterling vs O'Malley | Zhang vs Lemos | Weidman vs Tavares
And it is likely why she has been a picture of composure during her first championship fight week in Boston. To her, this is all part of the path she saw when she first stepped onto an MMA mat.
“My mind is in a great place,” she said. “I’m focused to go out there and bring this belt to Brazil.”
After two-division champ Amanda Nunes laid her gloves down in the Octagon at UFC 289 in Vancouver, the consensus G.O.A.T. challenged her fellow Brazilians to fill the championship void she was leaving. Alexandre Pantoja stepped up a month later when he defeated Brandon Moreno to snag the flyweight title for himself, and Lemos hopes to keep the train rolling.
To get past Zhang is no easy task, however. Since first winning the title in 2019, she has only shown an improvement in her all-around skills. She came out on top in a striking war in her first fight against Joanna Jędrzejczyk – likely the best fight of the decade so far – and when she recaptured the belt at UFC 281, she did so on the mat.
That said, Lemos’ path to contention was one filled with a variety of tasks – a benefit of rolling through the deepest women’s division in the UFC. Her back-to-back wins over Michelle Waterson and Marina Rodriguez were also her best performances to date, showing she was not only elite, but title worthy.
Full UFC 292 Fight Card Breakdown
Lemos acknowledges her opponent’s skillset and expects to dig deep in order to prove her prophecy true.
“I think it’s going to be a war,” Lemos said. “We’ll put on a show to the fans. There’ll be a lot of action in this fight, very aggressive, but I’m getting my hand raised in the end.”
If Lemos gets the job done in Boston, the general belief is that it’ll be due to her heavy hands. Andrade claimed her countrywoman hit harder than Zhang, and her eight knockout victories speak to that fight-ending power.
Her ground-game is nothing to scoff at, either. Her submissions come with as much aggression and fierceness as her knockouts, so wherever this fight goes with Zhang, the lethal threats remain present.
How To Watch UFC 292 In Your Country
It’s the kind of matchup that has any MMA fan who knows anything absolutely buzzing. Lemos, though, is a picture of driven composure. Her goals in the sport have always been lofty, and August 19 represents what she believes is the start of a championship legacy of her own.
“I want to write my name in the UFC history book,” she said. “When I win this belt, I’m going to defend it and whenever they talk about UFC champions, my name will be right up there.”
UFC 292: Sterling vs O'Malley took place live from TD Garden in Boston on August 19, 2023. See the Final Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC Fight Pass!
Tags
