Two years and 12 days. That's how long Yazmin Jauregui's time away from the octagon would be the moment she sets foot in the cage at Saturday's UFC Fight Night 289 from the Meta APEX in Las Vegas (Paramount+).
Jauregui (11-2 MMA, 3-2 UFC), who entered the UFC in 2022 as one of the most highly touted Mexican prospects, has been out of the headlines and laying low over the last two years. The UFC women's strawweight was forced to put her fighting career on hold after sustaining a bad knee injury that required her to get surgery. Now healthy, Jauregui makes her return against Vanessa Demopoulos (11-8 MMA, 5-5 UFC) on the preliminary card this weekend.
It's been a long road back for Jauregui.
"The last fight I had was at the Sphere, and it was a fight where
I took a defeat, and that's fine," Jauregui told Hablemos MMA in Spanish. "You have to keep working, keep growing; that's the focus. I got another fight for UFC Mexico in (March 2025). I was doing the camp like always, and in one of the trainings, during a sparring, I suffered a very serious knee injury. That pumped the breaks on all plans and I had to get an emergency surgery. That left me on the shelf these two years. Well, two years from my last fight, but a year and nine months from the injury. Now, I feel good. We did a great job recovering from the injury and returning to training. We've learned really good things, and I always think things happen for a reason. I had to go through this to keep learning and growing."
Apart from rehabbing her knee, Jauregui opened up a cafe at Entram Gym in Tijuana, Mexico to help support herself as her fighting career was on hold. She also had a lot of time to reflect on many things, including how she was handling the pressure put by experts and pundits on her promising career.
"I had a lot of expectations very early into my career, and I'll be honest with you – I'm a very disciplined woman, and I take my job very seriously – and I think that when all that was happening my head was too focused on that, and I don't think I was able to enjoy my career as a fighter," Jauregui said. "I think these last two years have helped me. I don't like the who thing, 'Ah, the champion.' The one that's going to be the next Mexican champion.' Yes, thank you. Very cool, but I don't want that to be my focus. My priority is the now and today. Everything will come when it needs to come, I'm sure of that. But yeah, at that point, I put myself that pressure of, 'Yeah, I'm next. I'm going to be the best. I'm going to do this and that,' but God reminded me I still have a long way to go, so slow down, step by step."
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Yazmin Jauregui details 'very serious' injury that kept her two years away from UFC
