Jessica Andrade was pleased with her first-round submission win over Amanda Lemos on Saturday night.
Andrade dropped back down to strawweight for the fight after having three fights at flyweight. She went 2-1 in the division with her one loss being to Valentina Shevchenko for the belt, but after taking some time away from cutting weight she decided she needed to return to 115lbs.
“I had two rough weight cuts in my last fights at strawweight, and that is what prompted me to fight at flyweight,” Andrade said after UFC Vegas 52. “Things weren’t going well – my head wasn’t in a good place. It was a little traumatic, the last two ones I had. So we decided to just take a break. Let’s give it some time, let’s do something in a weight class above. Let’s just remove weight-cutting from your mind for a little bit.
“As well as things went at flyweight, strawweight is where I’m going to excel at,” Andrade continued. “I know I can to do well at flyweight, I know that I can beat a bunch of girls at bantamweight. But if I want to be champion again, strawweight is the place to be.”
Jessica Andrade proved that she is dangerous at strawweight as she quickly finished Amanda Lemos on Saturday. The win could very well put her in title contention, but for her, she doesn’t care what is next. Instead, she just wants to be active as possible and hopefully fight for UFC gold again.
“I think this is a big win,” Andrade said. “We were aware that going into this one, I was ranked No. 10, so I couldn’t really expect to be a title challenger right away. But it was also on my mind that, maybe if we do something different, if we have a devastating win, if we really do something outside of the norm, maybe, who knows. It’s a tough division. There are a bunch of girls ahead of me. Maybe we can get the conversation going.
“No matter what, I want to keep active if the girls are fighting right away – Joanna and [Zhang] Weili. If I can fight someone there it would be great,” Andrade concluded. “Hopefully, it could be soon, because they’re fighting next month. But if that doesn’t happen, if there’s something good at flyweight, I don’t mind fighting there. If there’s something interesting at bantamweight, I’ll fight there. It’s all good. Just keep me ranked everywhere, and I’ll fight whoever’s in front of me.”
