Yuneisy Duben was the breakout star at Tuesday’s Contender Series event, and according to her new boss, she needed a win as much as anyone.
That win came in the form of a spectacular one-punch knockout as Duben (6-0, 1 NC) defeated the massively favored Shannon Clark (5-1) in just 73 seconds. UFC CEO Dana White told reporters after the show that Duben faced incredible financial struggles ahead of her Contender Series fight, to the point that the 28-year-old prospect needed an assist from UFC staff during the week just to make it to fight night.
“The biggest upset in the history of the Contender Series,” White said. “[UFC matchmaker] Mick [Maynard] was telling us that he was going through his text chain with her and her people, she almost didn’t come. She has no money.
“She doesn’t have a dollar to her name right now. … Her per diem got messed up and all this stuff, so the staff had to go grocery shopping for her, and then she comes in and does that. Let me tell you what, she ain’t broke now.”
White confirmed that in addition to receiving a UFC contract, he also gave Duben a bonus check for her performance. The bonus amount was not disclosed.
A native of Venezuela currently fighting out of Peru, Duben described herself as coming from humble beginnings in her own media scrum following Tuesday’s event. She has been working since the age of 12 to provide for herself and her family as well as to fund her MMA training, and mentioned that she has had equipment donated to her in the past.
Duben was grateful to UFC staff and to her faith for helping her get to this point in her career.
“It was really impactful when it happened,” Duben said of the staff’s kind gesture. “But at the same time, I basically said, ‘I’m going to do it. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to fight, I’m going to make it, I’m going to go out there, I’m going to shine. This night is mine and I’m going to make it happen.’ I think that who I have to thank is God. Whatever needed to happen for me to be here happened and that’s how I believe it happened.”
That single-mindedness is what drove Duben to power through her fight with Clark, who was as high as a 13-to-1 favorite according to White.
As Duben tells it, she didn’t even go through the usual pre-fight routine of sparring or warming up before walking out to the UFC APEX cage. Instead, she focused on the vision of her landing a knockout punch, an idea that proved to be prophetic.
“That’s exactly what was happening,” Duben said. “I was saying, ‘I’m going to do it.’ Not just here, when we were here, but all throughout. I was dreaming, I was visualizing, I was envisioning this happening, that I was going to do it, that I was going to do it that way. Back when we were warming up, the same thing, I would raise my hand. This is what’s going to happen, I’m going to come out victorious, this red corner is going to win, and it happened.”
Watch Duben’s post-fight media scrum below, courtesy of Amy Kaplan MMA.
