“I just love a fight — I love the fight business and everything related to it,” she added with a huge smile when talking about hustling into the short-notice pairing with Chandler, who has since competed at featherweight and seems poised to remain in the 145-pound weight class. “MMA is not an easy sport, you need to wait for a lot of things — for your fights, for the right moment for changes, especially when you’re fighting from somewhere where nobody has done it before.”
That’s a piece of Stoliarenko’s story that often goes overlooked or under-discussed.
While there are other Lithuanian fighters that have made it to the UFC, the Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt is the only one to do so while continuing to train at home in Kaunas. Everything for Stoliarenko has been trial-and-error as, unlike the vast majority of her contemporaries, there hasn’t been someone from her city and her region that excelled at the highest level in the sport before, meaning there has been no blueprint for her to follow.
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“From the beginning when I started to train with my coach, we had a goal (to reach) the UFC, and in those times, it was a miracle,” explained Stoliarenko. “It was a dream that if it would come true, nobody would believe it, and we just patiently looked for steps, building my career.
“I was probably the least expected fighter to get into the UFC when I was younger, especially when you’re the first girl who is doing a serious career in MMA. You need to figure out what to do, what to change. In my country, we’re doing that for the first time, and to find the right moment, you need to have patience, for sure.
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“Of course, we made mistakes, but those mistakes taught us lessons,” she added. “And I hope that for the next generation, it’s going to be easier and easier and easier because we already have that path; we’ve already made those steps to the UFC.”
Having continued to refine their process, the shift down to flyweight feels like the next correct step for the lifelong martial artist, who was introduced to karate as a child and has additionally competed in both kickboxing and Lethwei.
“Me as a featherweight was very bad,” Stoliarenko said with a laugh. “Bantamweight was overall pretty good to me, in the whole of my career, but I always felt that if I was to do something great, it would be at flyweight.
