Vanessa Demopoulos, a Strawweight UFC fighter, boasts a compelling rags-to-riches story of her own. At a young age, she suffered from homelessness and fiddled with drugs. However, she came a long way to achieve her dream of fighting in the UFC.
Vanessa was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 22, 1988. She spent a good chunk of her childhood in Greece as she is half-Greek and her first language is also Greek. As a teenager, she became entangled in a world of drugs, leading to periods of homelessness in her life. This, in turn, led her to join a profession that has reportedly been followed by her mother. She became an exotic dancer at around the age of 18.
Since the age of 21, however, she has been training for MMA. Vanessa juggled her life as a stripper and an MMA fighter for over a decade and never complained about it. She believes her background as an entertainer makes her who she is today.
In an interview with Bleacher Report, she said “My background as an entertainer, as somebody who’s been through the trenches and through so much darkness and has always been a light amongst the darkness, has really kind of helped me to keep a positive outlook on life.”
She says that gratitude and her faith in God is what keeps her going. “I’m very grateful. I’m really appreciative of everything that I am, everywhere that I’ve been, and everywhere that I continue to go.”
She further explained that she has overcome a lot of adversities in her life. Vanessa is proud of herself for making it big on the MMA stage.
Vanessa Demopoulos juggled her career as a stripper and an MMA fighter for years
After joining the adult industry, Vanessa also began to go to the gym and train for a career in MMA. In an interview with MMA Mania, she explained the difficulties of achieving what she has achieved.
“I had to pace myself so that I could make it through an eight-hour shift of doing crazy gymnastics and dancing. Just being a personality throughout the duration of those shifts. It was exhausting to be awake until four o’clock in the morning and still make sure you’re maintaining a healthy lifestyle to be an athlete at the highest caliber possible in one of the toughest sports imaginable.”
She made her professional MMA debut as a 29-year-old at Iron Tiger Fight Series 79. She defeated Emme Weber via an armbar submission in the first round.
A year later, she went on to fight in the Legacy Fighting Alliance. After losing her first fight there, she won the next four fights. She got an opportunity to fight at the Dana White’s Contender Series and lost to Cory McKenna in August 2020. She finally made her UFC debut in August 2021, a unanimous decision loss to JJ Aldrich. At around that time in 2021, she gave up her job as a stripper and started fighting full-time.
Vanessa Demopoulos jumped into Joe Rogan’s arms after her UFC 270 win
After a losing start to her UFC career, Vanessa was ready to make amends. She was slated to fight Silvana Gómez Juárez at UFC 270 in January 2022. She won the match via a first-round submission. However, more than her win, her celebration trended on social media.
She was extremely excited to see Joe Rogan interview her post-match. Vanessa jumped into Rogan’s arms and the podcaster played it extremely cool. She talked about it with MMA Fighting in an interview a few weeks later.
“I do so much positive self-talk and I thought, ‘Joe Rogan’s gonna interview me, this is gonna be my moment,’” Demopoulos told MMA Fighting. “I’m just gonna put my arm around him, put one leg up, the other leg up, and he’s just gonna hoist me up.
That’s what’s going to happen, and it was so flawless. It happened exactly the way I thought in my head over and over again. I was like, ‘Let’s go!’. It was so freaking cool that he went along with it. What a cool guy.”
Vanessa is a very positive personality who is loved by fans and people involved in the industry. She is set to have a successful career in the UFC.