Beatriz Mesquita has had just one fight in the UFC so far, and she is looking like a supernova. On Saturday, the Brazilian prospect made her promotional debut, finishing Irina Alekseeva en route to a second-round rear-naked choke finish.
That performance netted Mesquita a $50,000 Performance of the Night bonus – one of four given that night. More importantly, it cemented her as someone at women’s bantamweight to keenly observe.
Before she was a mixed martial artist, Mesquita was one of the most decorated Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners in the world, male or female. Having started training at five, she was a national junior champion, among other accolades, by age 10. She became a brown belt a after turning 18, and her dominance soon came.
That same year, Mesquita won her first significant tournament – the Brazilian No-Gi Championship. The following year, she added the World No-Gi and European titles. 2011 saw her add the Pan-American Championship, and in 2012, she clinched the most prestigious of BJJ accolades – the World Championship.
Ultimately, Mesquita left full-time BJJ competition after 2022 with 24 black belt-level titles – including a record ten in the Worlds. In 2023, she announced that she would transition to MMA, later joining American Top Team to facilitate her transition.
After winning her MMA debut in her home country, Mesquita was signed to LFA and had a monstrous rise, clinching the women’s bantamweight title with a second-round TKO. That got her noticed by the UFC, who signed her before the end of July this year.
This leads back to the present.
Mesquita stands in a quandary when it comes to her UFC career. At 34 years of age, she is closer to the end of her athletic prime than its beginning, At the same time, however, she is still very new to the sport, having had just six fights after Saturday.
This means that if Mesquita wants to make a run for the title, she will have to do so fast. And even if she does, she will not have an easiest of opponents to dethrone: Kayla Harrison, assuming that the current champion is still around.
There has been speculation that Harrison may retire after fighting Amanda Nunes. Mesquita, however, believes otherwise, telling MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz during fight week:
“I think for her this fight with Amanda is gonna be one of like her biggest goals in her career, but I don’t think she’s done yet. …I hear that she wants to fight at the White House. So for sure another fight.”
If by chance the UFC is able to book that fight, it will be another mythical clash that could reinvigorate women’s bantamweight. The former Olympic gold medalist judoka against the undisputed queen of the IBJJF – it could be a grappling war that has rarely been seen in the Octagon.
In a way, Mesquita may be seen as a female version of Alex Pereira. Like her, the current two-time light heavyweight champion was a relative MMA neophyte when he joined the UFC, having had just four fights under his belt. Then he had a meteoric rise, needing only four fights to win the middleweight title.
Perhaps Dana White will look to recapture that kind of magic with Mesquita. Thus, it will be very interesting to see where her career goes from here.
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