No Easy Outs for Marina Rodriguez

Marina Rodriguez could not have squeezed much more out of her Ultimate Fighting Championship experience thus far, outside of challenging for the undisputed women’s strawweight crown.

The Thai Brasil rep will attempt to reassert herself in the 115-pound weight class when she confronts Gillian Robertson in a UFC on ESPN 67 prelim on Saturday at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, Iowa. Rodriguez has lost four of her past five bouts, the last two by split decision. At 38, her margin for error has thinned considerably.

“I’ve faced only the best fighters in the strawweight division,” she told Sherdog.com. “I’ve had an excellent run so far in the UFC. I headlined three cards and won three bonuses. Few fighters manage to do this.”

Rodriguez was on the verge of title contention not long ago, but she turned down an opportunity to face Weili Zhang at UFC 275 in 2022 due to lack of preparation time. Zhang knocked out Joanna Jedrzejczyk with a spinning backfist, then went on to reclaim the undisputed women’s strawweight championship for a second time.

“Like [UFC CEO] Dana White says, timing is everything,” Rodriguez said. “We would only have had 40 days, and there were other reasons, such as my coach getting another athlete ready for a title bout on the same day. The bad timing on that occasion took me out of contention. It was frustrating. It may have influenced some of my later results, but nothing erases what I’ve accomplished.”

Robertson, meanwhile, has rattled off three straight victories. The Canadian last competed at UFC Fight Night 247, where she took a three-round unanimous decision from Luana Pinheiro on Nov. 9. One of the division’s premier grapplers, Robertson, a longtime Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, has secured nine of her 15 career wins by submission.

“I’ll be ready for her, no matter where we find ourselves,” Rodriguez said. “I’m confident we’ll have a great fight. I’m sure she’ll look to use her grappling, starting with her takedowns, but I have a history of fights against other grapplers. I’ve never been submitted. I feel confident I can hit her from a distance, but if we hit the mat, I’m very ready for that, too. I’m much stronger. I’ll fight her at every moment. I got ready to both defend and attack using my jiu-jitsu. She won’t be able to get comfortable the way she did with her other opponents. She’ll see that it won’t be easy. Every round starts on the feet, and if she doesn’t believe in my jiu-jitsu, I’ll make sure to submit her.”

Rodriguez knows she can ill afford another misstep at this stage of her career.

“To get this far took an enormous amount of work,” she said. “Nothing has been easy.”