'We knew it was going to happen:' Alexa Grasso's BJJ coach, Diego Lopes, details lengthy prep for UFC 285

Alexa Grasso is not a UFC champion by coincidence.

Many dismissed Grasso’s chances of dethroning all-time great Valentina Shevchenko entering this past Saturday’s UFC 285, and even after beating her to become the first person to finish Shevchenko, some are still not ready to give Grasso her due. At a quick glance, some see Grasso’s historic upset win over Shevchencko as a sign of luck, a costly mistake by Shevchenko, or maybe even just as one of the rare but reoccurring wild cards the MMA Gods deal out from time to time.

Well, Grasso’s jiu-jitsu coach at Lobo Gym in Guadalajara, Mexico, Diego Lopes, also a current MMA fighter, guarantees that there’s more than meets the eye.

Grasso’s quick back take and lock of the rear-naked choke in response to Shevchenko’s spinning kick was something. Like many other successful attacks from Grasso that night, that was carefully planned out  – and there’s proof of it.

“We could say that easily hundreds, actually thousands of times,” Lopes told MMA Junkie in Spanish when asked about how much Grasso trained the counter-attack seen at UFC 285. “It was a long time, and I’m telling you: We’d go over that every day – day and night.

“We were there reviewing it before hard training, after hard training, we’d always go over the same thing. Alexa has always had good jiu-jitsu. It was just about working specific details.”

Alexa Grasso drilling the counter to Valentina Shevchevko’s spinning kick in the lock room at #UFC285.

She writes on Instagram:

“The back take after the spinning kick was trained for MONTHS.” pic.twitter.com/BeJQD50bVw

— Danny Segura (@dannyseguratv) March 6, 2023

Francisco Grasso, Alexa’s uncle and head coach, recognized the opening and brought it to Lopes’ attention after going over hours of footage on Shevchenko. They knew there had to be something that they could exploit in the fight – even from a world-class champion – and fortunately for them, they found a dent in the armor.

“In all her fights, she’s thrown spinning kicks,” Lopes said. “The master mind behind all of this has been Pancho (Francisco Grasso). He’s always days and night, even in early hours of the morning – sometimes doesn’t even sleep, analyzing every detail, every second of the fight to give us the best material for us to work with.

“It’s been a team effort, but the main credit goes to Pancho. He’s the one that saw that opening and that opportunity. He simply brought this to my attention and said, ‘Look, brother, I see this opportunity. What can we do here? What can we work with?’ And with that in mind, that’s when I contributed with my grain of sand to Pancho’s idea.

“This was the result. We waited for the opportunity and got it. As you mentioned, there’s the video. There’s the evidence. There’s no discussion. That’s what we did the whole camp. And it’s not just this, like that video, we have many other key things that we have video of in camp that happened in the fight. We knew it was going to happen. It was a team effort, but specially our coach Francisco Grasso, who saw the opening.”

But perhaps the most wild thing about all this, is not that Shevchenko no longer sits at the top of the UFC women’s flyweight division, but it’s actually realizing how long Grasso’s win was in the making.

The real work didn’t start months ago when Grasso and her team received a contract to fight Shevchenko in a five-round contest. They’ve actually been scouting Shevchenko well before they were in title contention.

“We started working on this ever since Alexa began taking off at 125 pounds,” Lopes explained. “After she beat Ji Yeon Kim and Macycee Barber (in 2021), we knew we could be fighting Valentina in the future, and since then, we’ve been preparing for this moment.

“People always looked at Valentina the way that she wants to be seen. But when we stopped to analyze every detail, every second of her fights, every opening that we could have, that’s when we said, ‘Hey, this is a fighter who we can beat. She’s not the seven-head monster that people are saying.’ We’ve been putting together a game plan for a long time. Obviously we’ve had a four-month camp, but that was just polishing up.”

Lopes assures that Shevchenko has been a point of discussion for many years inside the walls of Lobo Gym. Nothing personal, Shevchenko just happened to stay champion, and a UFC title at 125 pound is what they were after.

“Oh, yeah, a while,” Lopes responded when pressed about how far back they’ve been studying Shevchenko. “If you enter the rankings, and you’re not thinking about the title, then what are you doing there? If you don’t want to fight for the title, if you don’t want to face the champion, then why do you work to be in the rankings?

“The objective with Alexa was clear. In every fight you could see her evolving. The goal has always been the title, regardless of who was champion. It just so happen to be that fight after fight, Valentina stayed champion, so every time we won, we’d sit down and analyze Valentina’s fights knowing that the opportunity may one day come.”

That night in Las Vegas at T-Mobile Arena, Grasso did more than just win a UFC title and become the first person to finish Shevchenko in her 20-year-career. She also made history for her country as the first Mexico-born woman to challenge and win a UFC championship belt.

Lopes is proud to have contributed to Grasso’s incredible feat and feels this win validates the work that’s being done by everyone at Lobo Gym.

“For me, it meant so much,” Lopes said. “It meant that every training session, everything, resulted in what we got that night. It filled me with pride. It filled me with emotion.

“We were against the world. Everyone was saying that it wasn’t possible, that Valentina was going to win. As you said, Alexa and I are friends apart from training partners, so it’s that, me being her trainer and friend and seeing how much she’s sacrificed to be where she’s at. She’s sacrificed so much of her life to be at this moment. The merit goes to her, the team, her uncle and coach Francisco Grasso.”

For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 285.