Tag: Francisco Grasso

MMA Junkie’s 2023 Coach of the Year: Francisco Grasso

Coach Francisco Grasso left a big imprint in MMA, as he was responsible for some of the biggest moments this 2023.

The name [autotag]Francisco Grasso[/autotag] probably didn’t ring a bell entering 2023, but leaving the past calendar year, it’s associated with UFC gold and Mexican MMA history.

Francisco, or better known as “Pancho,” truly let his work speak for himself. In a sport where media attention or public narrative often sways the appreciation of fighters or moments in time, Francisco left a big imprint in 2023 without ever doing an English-language interview and very limited interviews in Spanish.

Francisco had his hand in many important moments this 2023, but most notably he made history with his niece – [autotag]Alexa Grasso[/autotag]. Under the tutelage of Francisco, Alexa became the first-ever Mexican female champion in the UFC, and they did it when many thought it was impossible.

Alexa was up against an all-time great, one of the most dominant champions in UFC history, regardless of gender and weight class. Alexa and her team, led by Francisco, had the tough task of dethroning Valentina Shevchenko, who at that point had seven consecutive title defenses and had never lost at flyweight.

The Grasso bloodline ended up pulling off one of the biggest upsets of 2023, and made history for their home country. Against all odds, Alexa submitted Shevchenko in March at UFC 285. It was a remarkable moment that highlighted the great work being done at Lobo Gym in Guadalajara. The two would return six months later in September to fight Shevchenko to a draw.

Even though it wasn’t a win, the fact that Grasso retained her belt and fought Shevchenko in a highly competitive decision, proved that the upset in March was no fluke and that Francisco and his team had truly leveled up to a world-class gym.

Francisco’s work as a coach was responsible for MMA Junkie’s Female Fighter of the Year and one of the biggest upsets as well. It’s incredible how much impact Lobo Gym had in MMA, given it’s not in a country with a strong history in MMA and is relatively small compared to titans such as American Top Team, AKA, Kill Cliff, and others.

On top of the historic win of Alexa, other results accompanied Francisco’s success as a coach in 2023. It wasn’t Alexa’s rise alone:

Diego Lopes

Francisco was responsible for MMA Junkie’s Female Fighter of the Year, and also MMA Junkie’s Newcomer of the Year.

[autotag]Diego Lopes[/autotag] had a huge impact in 2023 and enters 2024 as one of the most interesting prospects. Working with Francisco as both a fighter and assistant coach, Lopes showed brilliance every second he was in the octagon.

He gave a wild, Fight of the Night against unbeaten title contender Mosvar Evloev, a fight he took on 4 days’ notice. Following his debut, Lopes picked up a first-round submission win over Gavin Tucker in August and then a first-round KO over Pat Sabatini in November. He won $50,000 Performance of the Night bonuses in both finishes.

Loopy Godinez

[autotag]Loopy Godinez[/autotag] made history with Lobo Gym in 2023. She became the woman with the most wins in a calendar year, having her hand raised four times in the octagon.

Francisco took Loopy Godinez under his wing mid-2023, but Godinez had worked part-time with Lobo Gym for fights earlier in the year. There’s no denying that Godinez turned a corner with Lobo Gym, as she looked highly dominant and got herself in the top 10 of the UFC official strawweight rankings with her win over Tabatha Ricci in November.

Irene Aldana

Francisco got top UFC women’s bantamweight contender [autotag]Irene Aldana[/autotag] to challenge Amanda Nunes for her title at UFC 289. Certainly, it was a disappointing performance from Aldana, who was dominated from bell to bell. However, people forget that just getting to a UFC title fight alone is a big achievement few fighters accomplish in their careers.

Aldana would return to UFC 296 in December to redeem herself and defeat Karol Rosa while delivering arguably the best female fighter of the year.

Alessandro Costa

[autotag]Alessandro Costa[/autotag] picked up a big win over Jimmy Flick in June, putting him away with some nasty elbows. He then took on ranked fighter Steve Erceg and lost a competitive decision. Although Costa closed out the year with a loss, he still shows promise in the UFC’s flyweight division.

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Admiring Alexa Grasso and Irene Aldana, Loopy Godinez excited to join Lobo Gym: ‘We can do incredible things’

Loopy Godinez sees big things in the horizon now training with Alexa Grasso and Irene Aldana at Lobo Gym.

[autotag]Loopy Godinez[/autotag] is confident her next career move will unlock new levels to her game, and she’s very much looking forward to it.

The UFC strawweight is joining Lobo Gym in Guadalajara, Mexico, on a full-time basis, and moving forward she will do all her training camps there under the tutelage of [autotag]Francisco Grasso[/autotag]. Godinez (10-3 MMA, 5-3 UFC) has cross-trained there in the past, but keeping her primary training at Titan MMA in Canada.

Godinez thinks this was a much-needed move in her career.

“The fights are going to get harder, and we’ve been seeing the work that they’re doing, and I’ve actually worked with them in the past,” Godinez told MMA Junkie in Spanish. “We truly have chemistry with everyone from the team, the coach, so it’s the best thing for my career.”

Godinez will be joining UFC flyweight champion Alexa Grasso and UFC title challenger Irene Aldana now training at Lobo Gym. The 29-year-old thinks highly of them, and they were the reason why she sought the team out in the first place.

“I had looked for them because I was a super fan of Alexa and Irene,” Godinez said. “I thought it would be super cool to train with them, and that’s how things worked out. We’ve built a really nice friendship, and now I’ll be in Lobo and part of that gym. I’m truly happy.”

Godinez is coming off a decision win over former Invicta FC champion Emily Ducote at UFC Fight Night 224 this past Saturday. It’s her second consecutive win and her fourth victory in her past five fights.

The Mexican fighter thinks she can pair her career momentum along with the teams’ to get closer to her goal of becoming UFC champion.

“We’re seeing the results, and I think that team favors me a lot,” Godinez said. “I think we can do a lot together with the striking and wrestling and combining that. I think we can do incredible things. It’s all about improving as a fighter and athlete, and you have to sometimes make changes to keep growing.”

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

Alexa Grasso and her team sure did their homework before choking out Valentina Shevchenko for UFC gold.

[autotag]Alexa Grasso[/autotag] 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, [autotag]Diego Lopes[/autotag], 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.”

[autotag]Francisco Grasso[/autotag], 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.”

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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.”

Alexa Grasso is carried in the ring after defeating Valentina Shevchenko in a UFC 285 mixed martial arts flyweight title bout Saturday, March 4, 2023, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker) ORG XMIT: NVDB118

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.

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The Mujeres of Lobo Gym: Inside a Mexican MMA hotbed

MMA Junkie traveled to Guadalajara to highlight the rise of Lobo Gym, home to some of the most talented Hispanic female fighters today.

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Many people might not know this, but the capital city of Jalisco is flourishing in the fight game thanks, in large part, to a collection of talented female mixed martial artists.

MMA Junkie traveled to the capital of Jalisco to highlight the rise of Lobo Gym and its particular contribution to MMA. Founded in 2010, Lobo Gym has stood out for producing the careers of some of the most notable Hispanic female fighters today.

From UFC and Bellator title contenders to Invicta FC champions, Lobo Gym head coach [autotag]Francisco Grasso[/autotag] and his staff are responsible for the career launches of [autotag]Alexa Grasso[/autotag], [autotag]Irene Aldana[/autotag], [autotag]Karina Rodriguez[/autotag], [autotag]Alejandra Lara[/autotag], [autotag]Paulina Vargas[/autotag], [autotag]Abigail Montes[/autotag], and more.

How did this come to fruition? MMA Junkie presents “The Mujeres of Lobo Gym,” an inside look at one of the top gyms in Mexico and Latin America.