Vanessa Demopoulos scored a fantastic submission win at UFC 270 after suffering a brutal knockdown against Silvana Gomez Juarez. It was actually Demopoulos’ first win in the octagon after she lost a unanimous decision to JJ Aldrich in her promotional debut at UFC Vegas 35. Despite that, Demopoulos was always going to be dangerous on the ground against Gomez Juarez as she’s an experienced grappler and has shown as much in the past. In fact, she competed at the very first Medusa event in their Eddie Bravo Invitational rules tournament. Although she wasn’t able to emerge victorious at the event, she did put on a great show and made it past the opening round before losing to the eventual winner, Fatima Kline.
At UFC 270, Vanessa Demopoulos was in sore need of a win to get her career back on track and she managed to pull through despite facing incredible adversity. Gomez Juarez was using her reach advantage to great success early on as she landed some good leg kicks and strikes from a distance. The first knockdown of the night came out of nowhere though as she rocked Demopoulos with a thundering right hand that sent her tumbling to the canvas. Gomez Juarez sensed blood in the water and leapt at the opportunity to get the first win of her UFC career, jumping on Demopoulos and hammering her with ground and pound.
In doing so, Gomez Juarez didn’t show enough respect to her opponent’s ground game and left her arm in danger. Demopoulos might have been rocked but she still had enough of her wits about her to take advantage of the lapse in judgement and she locked up a tight armbar, sweeping Gomez Suarez to her back and then hyper-extending her arm to force the tap.
Footage of both the initial knockdown that Silviana Gomez Juarez scored and the armbar that Vanessa Demopoulos managed to finish the fight with at UFC 270 was uploaded to the official Twitter account of the UFC:
ANOTHER HUGE RIGHT GETS THE FIRST KNOCKDOWN OF THE NIGHT 💥
[ #UFC270 | Early Prelims LIVE on @UFCFightPass & E+ ] pic.twitter.com/HR2CcCce5Z
— UFC (@ufc) January 23, 2022
WHAT A COMEBACK! @Monster_Demo gets the first round submission!
[ #UFC270 | Early Prelims LIVE on @UFCFightPass & E+ ] pic.twitter.com/A8uKo6Qtld
— UFC (@ufc) January 23, 2022
