“You can see a lot of crocodiles from the car window.” UFC Girl answers unusual questions about living in Florida and marrying a Brazilian fighter

We talk to Yanoy Santos, known for a long time as Kunitskaya. But now Yana is married to Brazilian fighter Thiago Santos, and together the couple have a daughter, Alice. Yana and Thiago fought for the UFC belts but lost their fights in 2018-2019 to two dominant champions: Chris Justino and Jon Jones.

We told the story of the relationship between Yana and Thiago big text a little earlier, but now there is a great reason to complete it.

On Saturday, Yana Santos will fight her 23rd MMA bout against Carol Rosa and look to close out her March 25 loss to former UFC champion Holly Holm. Then Yana had just returned from the decree and lost by decision of the judges.

– Your last fight with Holly Holm was tough for you: you lost, and Holly had a lot of good times over three rounds. Is it psychologically difficult to accept such a defeat?

– No, it’s not difficult, because overall I was happy that I managed to return (Yana Santos missed a year and a half because of the birth of her daughter, – “”) . That I can perform again, compete with top athletes. And I decided that I wouldn’t be angry. I will continue to work, and now I am happy to have the new opportunity to fight quickly.

– It was clear that this fight was difficult for you. And along the way, did you feel that Holm’s level is fundamentally higher, that you’re fighting with the former UFC champion, world boxing and kickboxing champion?

– And I worked with it before and I understood that it doesn’t really hit the ground, but it holds well if it presses. She has good static strength: it’s hard to get up, but I didn’t miss any particularly strong hits. She just held me down, I couldn’t get up, and the fight turned out to be unspectacular.

– And in terms of sparring, did you have something such that you felt a big difference in level with your opponent?

– Yes, there are only sharks in the American Top Team … And it often happens that all the girls are good at one thing. There are those who do the guillotines well, there are those who leave certain positions or transfer. I really like working with Kayla (Kayla Harrison, double Olympic champion in judo, 15-1 in MMA – ). She has a very good fighting sense. Sometimes girls, if something doesn’t work out, try to emotionally work out and start training as if there’s some kind of personal offense. Well, you know this: “You hit me, now I’m giving you…”. And when you work with Kayla, she’s like a professional, it’s very comfortable with her.

– Once Valentina Shevchenko canceled the fight against Amanda Nunes. Joanna Jedrzejczyk wanted to replace Nunez urgently, but was told she didn’t have time to take a pregnancy test. Does this mean that every fighter must make sure she is not pregnant before the fight?

– There, when you do a blood test, they additionally examine for possible pregnancy, and this is done 10 days before the fight, and one more after the weigh-in, that is, you need to do two tests at the total, and this is determined by the results of a blood test.

— What workouts can you do with your husband, provided he is a man and weighs 30 kg more?

We often train together when we don’t have fights. Or you just need to keep fit and move. If he is injured, you can even train very easily. It’s like shadow boxing, but you work with a partner. We can take turns working on the bag. Or on the legs. Naturally, when I hold his paws he can’t bring much, but for the technique he can work, and we really like him. Also, we do conditioning and strength training together all the time. It’s comfortable.

– You and Thiago started a family, Marina Mokhnatkina started dating Sergei Spivak, Paige Vanzant is engaged to Austin Vanderford. Was there such a thing inside the venue, so you could see something started for a few fighters and then it ended, but the media didn’t find out?

– In general, there are many couples in the room. And when I arrived, there were already some, and many come in pairs at once. But for a relationship to begin, in fact, this does not happen often. I remember Kayla was dating a UFC fighter and they broke up. But I wasn’t there when they started dating. I just saw them together at competitions and realized that then it was all over with them.

– Your relationship with Thiago could be guessed when you appeared in the UFC film about Thiago’s preparation for the fight against Jon Jones. Have you tried to hide that you are together, at least for a while?

“We kind of did everything very quickly. Or rather, we met for the first time, but Thiago didn’t speak English at all, it was a year before the video you are talking about. Then we just couldn’t communicate. A year later he learned English, and when he came to Florida for the second time, we immediately met, began to live together, and from that period, one might say, we did not we never separated. So it was obvious to everyone. He only went to Brazil once, then we separated for a few weeks.

– Did you discuss who drew attention to whom first?

– We laughed a lot about it, because Thiago, of course, said that I was watching him. But I say I have all the evidence, and show him a post on social media, where it’s clear he wrote to me first. He looks and accepts.

– Do you communicate with your mother-in-law or is there still a language barrier?

“Unfortunately, Thiago’s mum does not speak English. Although I know her, we just communicated through her husband, he translated.

– You have an international family, can Tiago congratulate you on March 8, and are they aware of this holiday in Brazil?

– No, I understand that in Russia this day is called International Women’s Day, but in America and Brazil it is not such a popular holiday. In America, apparently, this is how Mother’s Day is celebrated, considering it Women’s Day. It was fairly recently, but I haven’t memorized the numbers yet to remember exactly when.

– Is there an analog in Brazil on February 23 or the day when men are generally congratulated?

– I’m not sure, and actually Brazil vacations diverge on all dates from USA vacations, and since we live in the USA, we focus even more on certain dates in America. Anyway, when children go to schools and kindergartens, they bring congratulations with gifts from there, and therefore we adhere more to the American calendar in terms of holidays. Although in general, if we want to organize a holiday, we can organize it ourselves any day.

– From friends who live in the United States, I heard that there are a lot of nice resorts in Florida, and not very popular. Did you and Thiago go somewhere on a two or three day basis?

“There’s a feeling that everywhere you go, like there’s a resort everywhere, and we live there. It takes 15 minutes to get to the nearest beach, you go out with a stroller – and it’s like being in paradise: animals, palm trees, plants are everywhere. But if it works, we travel. It got harder with a kid – you won’t get far, but it looks to me like we’ve been up and down all of Florida already. We really liked Key West (the southernmost point of the USA, an island in Florida, 150 km from Havana – “”), but it’s a long way to go; Ginny Springs is beautiful, clear blue waters, all kinds of water sports and lots for the kids. The park is very good and again there are lots of animals (a recreation area in North Florida – “”). But, unfortunately, if the place is good, then there are usually a lot of people there, and we don’t really like it when it’s crowded, we like it when it’s quieter.

— Alexey Oleinik says there are a lot of crocodiles in Miami. Can you really see them?

– Yes, indeed, you can find them everywhere and you have to be very careful. You see them especially often when driving near wilderness reservoirs, where people don’t usually swim and no one walks. From the car window you can see a huge number of crocodiles, sometimes dozens. But I have never met such as they approached where people live. Although it happens that some spin in their stories, or, for example, they swim in pools.

– So you can go swimming in a wild place and you will be attacked by a crocodile?

“Here people already understand that there are places where you just can’t swim, they usually put up warning signs that there may be alligators. And if you see them even from the car , it’s obvious to a person that you can’t swim in it. We were in the alligator park and talked to one of the experts, he said that as a rule, the crocodiles themselves attack very rarely, most often this happens when people try to take a shot or just climb on it – that’s when there can be trouble, and therefore crocodiles are afraid of people, not conflict.

– Do you cook something for Thiago from these dishes that seem familiar in Russia?

– Yes, I already cook four times a day, so we can say that I have already cooked everything. Brazilian cuisine, I have not particularly tried to study, but it is similar to ours. There may be some small differences. So we can say that 99% of our food is Russian cuisine. The only thing is, he doesn’t like soups. Sometimes I post in stories what I’m cooking, and everyone writes: “Where’s the first one?”. And he doesn’t like the first one.

– How often do you eat buckwheat porridge when you live in the United States?

– And I did not really like him in Russia, so rarely. Although here in the Russian store you can buy it. And in principle, there are quite a few stores where each stall is tied to a certain country. So finding buckwheat is not a problem. But we mostly eat sweet potatoes, pasta, rice, quinoa and stuff like that.