Fast facts
- Division: Women’s strawweight (UFC)
- Record: 8-2-1
- Nationality: Brazilian
- Team/gym: Temple Martial Arts
- Notable wins: Ariane Carnelossi (rear-naked choke, Round 3), Vanessa Demopoulos (unanimous decision), Julia Polastri (unanimous decision), Rayanne dos Santos (split decision)
On September 19, 2023, Talita Alencar and Stephanie Luciano fought to a draw on Dana White’s Contender Series. Luciano walked out with a UFC contract. Alencar walked out with nothing, which is about the cruelest thing that format can do to a fighter who didn’t lose. Less than three months later she was in the UFC anyway, and by late October 2026 she was ranked No. 14 at strawweight. That gap between the snub and the ranking is where her story lives.
Carutapera, Fortaleza, Rio
Ana Talita de Oliveira Alencar was born October 17, 1990, in Carutapera, in Brazil’s north, and her family moved to Fortaleza when she was nine. Before jiu-jitsu there was water. She swam competitively as a kid, then spent seven years in triathlon, and filled the edges of her childhood with surfing, skateboarding and capoeira. You can read a lot into that list if you want to. I read a kid who was never going to sit still.
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She found jiu-jitsu at 14, at Pirillo Roriz’s Gracie Barra academy, then moved to Academia Blec under Bruno Leandro, who gave her a blue belt. With that belt she left for Rio de Janeiro and joined Theodoro Canal at GFTeam Recreio. Three gyms, three coaches, before she was a purple belt. Most people only ever hear the name on the final certificate.
The grappler
The colored-belt years were loaded. She won the 2013 Rio Open at blue, then in 2014 took the American Nationals and the IBJJF World No-Gi title at purple. In 2016 she won the IBJJF World Championship at brown and was promoted to black belt on the strength of it, then won the World No-Gi Championship at black belt that same year. In August 2016 she left Brazil for Los Angeles and Alliance Jiu Jitsu.
Then came 2017, a year most grapplers would trade a career for. She won the IBJJF World Championship, the World No-Gi title, the Pan American Championship, the Abu Dhabi World Pro, the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam and a Fight To Win Pro championship. The losses came too, and they matter for the record: Ffion Davies beat her on points at Polaris 11 in 2019, and Nathalie Ribeiro beat her on points at Fight 2 Win 144.
She held the Fight 2 Win 125-pound title through the pandemic, beating Heather Raftery at Fight 2 Win 153 on September 25, 2020, and Gabrielle McComb by decision at Fight 2 Win 162 on January 29, 2021. Later in 2021 she beat McComb again, this time in a World No-Gi final, for her third black belt world no-gi title (2016, 2017, 2021).
She never fully left the mats, either. On November 3, 2024, already a UFC fighter, she won featherweight gold at the IBJJF No-Gi Pan Championship. Her match with Cassia Moura was set for UFC Fight Pass Invitational 10 in March 2025, got moved to UFC BJJ 1 that June, and went to Moura by unanimous decision.
The pivot
She turned pro in MMA in 2021, and a disclosure belongs here: she trained under UFC veteran Charles McCarthy, who edits this site, along with UFC featherweight Charles Rosa. Her debut was a strawweight bout on the main card of Titan FC 70 in Miami.
The Contender Series draw with Luciano could have been the end of the fast track. It wasn’t the end of anything. On December 9, 2023, at UFC Fight Night 233, she debuted against Rayanne dos Santos and took a split decision. Split decisions are a thin way to arrive, but they count.
The Luciano rematch came August 10, 2024, at UFC on ESPN 61, and Luciano won it clearly, a unanimous decision. That’s two fights against the same woman with zero wins to show for it, and a 1-1 UFC record for a 33-year-old who had once owned the grappling podiums of the world.
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The streak
What followed is the stretch that made her a ranked fighter. On April 5, 2025, at UFC on ESPN 65, she beat Vanessa Demopoulos by unanimous decision. On November 1, 2025, at UFC Fight Night 263, she gave the jiu-jitsu résumé its proper Octagon moment, choking out Ariane Carnelossi with a rear-naked choke at the very end of the third round. Plenty of fighters would have coasted that last minute. She went looking for the neck.
The Polastri fight on April 25, 2026, at UFC Fight Night 274, was a harder sell. She got the unanimous decision, but six of 11 media outlets scored it for her, which tells you how close the room thought it was. Three straight wins either way, and the No. 14 spot in the UFC’s strawweight rankings as of October 24, 2026.
The nickname, for what it’s worth, is “Problem Child.”
UFC Vegas 123
UFC Brasil promoted her Halloween-night bout with Piera Rodríguez as her bid for a fourth straight win inside the organization. She weighed in at 116 pounds on Friday, Rodríguez at 115.5, and they fought on the preliminary card at Meta Apex in Las Vegas on October 31, 2026, two weeks after Alencar’s 36th birthday.
Rodríguez won every round on every card. The judges turned in 30-27 three times, a unanimous decision with no room for argument. The streak was over, and Cagefile’s database now lists her at No. 39 among women’s strawweights, with a record of 8-2-1.
Where she stands
I’m wary of reading too much into one loss, and equally wary of the hype that comes after three wins, which is roughly what Alencar was riding into that fight. Both instincts land in the same place. She is a 36-year-old Brazilian strawweight with four UFC wins, two UFC losses, a submission finish and a grappling résumé better than almost anyone at 115 pounds, and her MMA game is still being built in public, one round at a time.
The tension in her career has always been that the mat credentials got her taken seriously and the Octagon kept asking for more. She answered that once already, after the Contender Series sent her home empty-handed and she made it to the UFC within three months anyway. The Rodríguez loss asks the question again, three 30-27 scorecards’ worth, and her next booking is where she’ll have to answer it.
