Angela Hill

Since debuting back in April of 2021, Lupe Valdez has been one of the most active female fighters on the entire UFC lineup, with her fight at UFC Vegas 22 this upcoming weekend marking her sixth-16th UFC contest.

And over the course of her first 15 UFC fights, she has fought some of the best strawweights on the planet, including Angela Hill, Tabatha Ricci, Virna Jandiroba, Mackenzie Dern, Jessica Andrade, and Tatiana Suarez.

However, we did see something from Lupe in April that we hadn't seen from her before, and that was her being stopped when Tatiana Suarez would submit her via rear naked choke in round two.

So now not only is Lupe Godinez behind the eight ball in the sense of trying to bounce back from a loss, which she has successfully done multiple times so far in her UFC run, now she's trying to get the nasty taste out of her mouth of being forced to tap.

Because even though she does enter on a two-fight win streak, including a knockout in her last fight in June when she finished Ariane Carnelossi, in her six UFC bouts, she is just three and three, and this is by far the biggest step up in competition that she has had to date.

And in her other two biggest contests in terms of name value and ranked fighters, she lost.

She was submitted by Karine Silva in her debut, granted, and then lost a decision to Angela Hill, the longtime veteran.

So basically, Ketlen will win the fights that she is supposed to win, but when she gets that step up in competition, that is where we've seen her falter thus far.

Big fan of Lupe.

The only fights she's really lost and had bad showings in are ones against grapplers, and then also the Angela Hill one.

She's not notoriously known to be a grappler.

But she did end up winning by decision, so going against an opponent like Ketlen Souza, who is a- Pretty heavy striker, lot of power, has good ground game, doesn't really use it.