Beatriz Consuli wants to extend her winning streak to 18 this Friday at LFA 221, combining both amateur (12-1) and professional (5-0) records, and hopes it comes quickly to save her mother from the stress.
Consuli will challenge Shannon Clark for the flyweight title in the main event of the evening in Brasilia, Brazil, and her mother Cleo Consuli once again will be in attendance. She has been in the venue for most of her bouts, except when she travelled to places like Russia and Abu Dhabi to win multiple IMMAF championships.
“I panicked when I was going to have my first kickboxing fight,” Consuli told MMA Fighting. “My mom has high blood pressure and I thought, ‘I can’t get beat or I’m screwed.’ I was more afraid of losing because of my mom than for myself [laughs]. And she was totally calm! She gives me a lot of confidence and stays cool so I don’t get anxious, but after the fight she breaks down, cries, and tells me how much she’s proud of me.”
Beatriz said her mother “doesn’t get nervous at all” during her MMA fights today, and was immediately interrupted by her.
“That’s a lie,” Cleo said. “She’s lying [laughs].”
Cleo’s daughters grew interested in martial arts classes when they were teenagers in Rio de Janeiro, and Beatriz joined a kickboxing gym a month before turning 15. Cleo is now used to to watching “Bia” trade punches and kicks and lock submissions in cages, but it’s different from any other MMA bout.
“She watches the UFC and gets upset when fights end too fast,” Beatriz said. “Mine will be fast, don’t worry.”
“There are fights I want to watch that are so good I don’t want them to end,” Cleo explained. “But when it’s my daughter, I prefer it to end quickly [laughs]. Look, I like watching fights, but I prefer when there’s no stress.”
Cleo predicts her daughter will win “in the best way possible” Friday in Brasilia, and said it will be “the best fight of her life.” Beatriz started her professional career with five straight decisions, and stopped Naiane Silva in just over three minutes in her most recent bout in July.
“I believe in the knockout,” Beatriz said of her title fight Friday night. “She’s very aggressive, always coming forward, but she moves in straight lines and has a very square stance. She doesn’t move her head or change angles. Sometimes she switches stances, but she just switches and then stands still. My plan is to work from mid to long range, control the distance, hurt her with calf kicks and strong jabs, and when she rushes in to clinch and take me down, I’ll ground and pound her.”
Training at Rio’s KO Squad team after a brief period at Nova Uniao, Consuli is no stranger to her opponent. Clark is 6-1 as a pro, losing only to Yuneisy Duben at Dana White’s Contender Series in 2024, and Consuli remembers that match vividly.
“I remember watching her fight on the Contender Series and picturing myself against her,” Consuli said. “My training partner Claudio Meirelles, who will also fight at LFA 221, texted me right then, ‘Bia, are you watching the Contender? Seriously, you’d beat both of them.’ [laughs]”
Fourteen months later, Consuli agrees with her teammate.
“I’m going to beat her. Following the right strategy, it’s going to work,” she said. “The experience I had as an amateur made me calm for this moment. People are like, ‘Man, you’ve got all this pressure to fight for a title fight, a world title, and you’re fighting a gringa.’ But come on, I’ve fought five Russians already. My amateur career gave me experience that not many people have.”
“I set it in my mind that I’m going to win this belt, and next year I’ll be in the UFC,” she added. “I truly believe that. I’ll perform really well in this fight and that next year I’ll be in the UFC, for sure.”
