In her UFC debut, which Tabatha Ricci took on just four days’ notice, there was something a little unnerving about the way she handled her introduction from Joe Martinez. As he barked out her name, Ricci stared dead-eyed into the camera, unflinching, unblinking, like it wasn’t Manon Fiorot she was coming for, but perhaps the full cauldron of our souls.
It was memorable if only because the “Baby Shark” nickname somehow lived up to billing before she ever threw a punch in the Octagon. Fiorot beat her that night back in 2021, yet you could tell Ricci was not only mean, but ready. There were no Octagon jitters. There was just a focus to get in there and do damage.
That was three years ago, and a weight class above her norm. These days Ricci is having a nice run as a strawweight, having posted a 6-1 record since that opening act at the UFC APEX, with her only loss coming in a coin-flip split decision against Loopy Godinez. She squares off Saturday against recent title challenger Yan Xiaonan in the co-main event of UFC Macau, in what could be the springboard to her own title contention, especially if she makes a big enough splash.
“I do like [fighting in enemy territory],” she says from the neon lights of Macau, commonly known as the Las Vegas of Asia. “I think it pushes me harder. It is in times like these that you make a name, and I think you’ve got to take these chances and challenge yourself to make history in the sport, prove everybody wrong.”
In this case, “everybody” happens to be the oddsmakers, which have installed Ricci as a nearly 2-to-1 underdog. Yet there is that certain something that suggests she’s coming for the division’s best, to the point where you can practically hear the music from “Jaws” playing behind her rapid approach.
It could be that Ricci is just 29 years old and entering her prime, or that she looked stronger than ever in her victory over Angela Hill in August. Or it could be that she has been building toward these bigger fights since she was 6 years old, when her father — Carlos “Trovao” Salto, a master judoka — started taking her to the gym.
What’s the old saying about swimming with the sharks? For a full two decades, Ricci has been rolling with men twice her size, starting as a young kid in her native Brazil.
“I used to be the only girl in there and the smallest one, and all the time whenever I showed up for training, one of my coaches would say, ‘Hey, the baby shark’s in the house!’” she says of her nickname. “From then on he kept calling me ‘Baby Shark,’ because I train with all the guys, I’m the little one out there trying to match everybody.”
The timing of this weekend’s big fight with Xiaonan is interesting for Ricci, as the women’s strawweight division is a little wide open. The champion, Zhang Weili, was presumably waiting on the winner of the scheduled fight between Tatiana Suarez and Virna Jandiroba, which was to take place at UFC 310 in December, but that fight was scotched when Suarez fell out with an undisclosed injury.
Right now, Ricci sits at No. 10 in the UFC’s rankings, but with Xiaonan holding down No. 2, there’s a chance to leapfrog the field in one fell swoop. If that seems farfetched, one only needs to look at Khalil Rountree Jr. getting a shot at Alex Pereira’s light heavyweight belt while still outside the top-five solar system.
The matchmaker’s DMs are wide open when you put on a show.
“I was right there next to the cage for Yan’s fight against Weili [at UFC 300],” Ricci says. “It was pretty intense, and it was one of the best fights of the night actually. She almost went to sleep and when she got up and cracked Weili down, there was this crazy scramble on the ground. It was pretty entertaining.”
It might go unsung, but there happens to be a little backstory to the fight as well. Ricci, who moved to Japan for a year when she was 21 and later relocated to Ventura, California, where she’s trained in MMA ever since, trained with Xiaonan on one occasion while plying her trade at Team Alpha Male — enough to get a taste of what Xiaonan can do.
“We did one wrestling training together,” Ricci says. “She’s pretty cool. She always been very nice with me. I think the Asian people — the Chinese people and Japanese people — they’re very respectful, so I really like that I come from judo and we can be respectful to each other. I think that’s very important for the martial arts.
“But yeah, she’s pretty good in the feet. She had a very powerful, strong right-hand punch, straight punches, and she swings hard. I’m getting better in my striking, been training like crazy, and so if I’m able to put all the pieces together and show for you guys what I can do, that’ll be pretty cool.”
And if she does, will she look dead-eyed into the camera and make a cold-blooded demand for a title shot? That’s how the “Baby Shark” rolls.
“I’m going to ask for the title and wait for the opportunity,” she says. “I’ve been fighting for so long, I never had much time off. I don’t have any break. If I have to wait for Weili, I will just wait for her, but I don’t think she wants to stay out too long. She probably wants to fight soon.”
