After dropping a hard-fought main event bout to Marina Rodriguez in 2021, Waterson-Gomez returned in July 2022 hoping to halt the momentum of surging Brazilian Amanda Lemos. For the most part, Waterson-Gomez looked like herself, but in a flash, Lemos wrapped Waterson-Gomez up in a guillotine choke, and the veteran found herself having lost four of her last five bouts.
“I belong,” Waterson-Gomez said when asked about what she learned from her fight against Lemos. “I was winning the fight until I wasn’t, and that’s kind of what you get when you step into the Octagon. MMA is just so unforgiving, and you can go left instead of right, or dip instead of dodge and lose a fight. It can happen to anybody. It happened to (Valentina) Shevchenko. It’s happened to (Israel) Adesanya… It doesn’t mean that you’re not a world class fighter. It doesn’t mean that you’re not a badass. It just means that, in that moment, you lost.
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“I walked away with my head held high, knowing that it was a moment of failure, and it doesn’t represent who I am as a fighter. I have so much more to give.”
Since then, Waterson-Gomez has continued to refine her game. She hoped to get another fight in before the new year but, at the very least, she said she signed a new eight-fight contract with the mixed marital arts leader.
