San Diego, CA — Making her debut at UFC San Diego will be Brazil’s Iasmin Lucindo, getting to experience a full house of fans for her first fight with the promotion.
While many recent newcomers have had empty house shows at the Apex, that won’t be the case here. Lucindo (13-4) doesn’t believe the feeling will change much either way, fans or no fans.
“I’ve done this many times. Whenever that cage closes, she’s my target, and it doesn’t matter anyway,” Lucindo said during Wednesday’s UFC San Diego media day.
With both Lucindo and opponent Yazmin Jauregui boasting a number of knockout victories, it feels as if the likelihood of a stoppage is high this Saturday. Lucindo agreed with that suggestion.
“Yeah, it’s going to be a war,” she said, “If it’s not going to be a knockout or a submission, it’s going to be a war. This fight promises a lot.”
Lucindo started fighting incredibly young, taking a fight at just 14 years old. There’s an undeniably tragic reason for that, something she opened about when asked by Cageside Press how she got into the sport.
“The reason why I started going into martial arts is for self-defense,” she revealed. “The women in my family, my mother and such, they suffered domestic violence. So I did it to defend myself, and I ended up liking it. And I just ended up continuing to fight, fight, fight, and my debut was at 14 years old. So that’s how I started MMA.”
Lucindo’s mother was very supportive of her decision to fight, “especially because it was a way for me to escape, it was a way out of the life that we had. And as an added bonus, we’re always going to have that as a defense mechanism. We actually have something to defend ourselves, which is very important for things not to happen again. You don’t want anything bad happening to you and your family.”
UFC San Diego takes place this Saturday, August 13, 2022 at the Pechanga Arena in San Diego, California. Watch the full media day with Iasmin Lucindo above.
