Julia Avila’s Amazing Weight Loss Transformation for UFC on ESPN 52 Clash with Miesha Tate

AUSTIN, Texas – Could MMA math play a role in weight cutting? It might just apply to Julia Avila’s chances for a big night on Saturday.

Avila (9-2 MMA, 3-1 UFC) is making a return after about 2.5 years as she concludes the preliminary card facing former women’s bantamweight champion Miesha Tate (20-9 MMA, 6-6 UFC) at UFC on ESPN 52 at Moody Center in Austin, Texas.

The application of MMA math emerges intriguing as Tate recently attempted a move to flyweight. She revealed that she found it too demanding to shed an additional 10 pounds from 135 to 125.

While Avila enters the cage this Saturday, it will mark almost a year since she weighed 225 pounds following a knee surgery and pregnancy with her first child. The drop to bantamweight translates to a staggering 90 pounds in approximately a year – a 40 percent weight drop.

“I went up to 225 pounds and I was huge,” Avila recalled at UFC on ESPN 52 media day on Wednesday. “I lost almost 100 pounds. I’m going to be almost 100 pounds difference from this time last year, and I don’t think people realize. It was the effort and the struggle and the pain that I had to go through and my team had to witness. But I would do it all over again if I needed to. I don’t need to, luckily. I’m not going to see this through, and there’s going to be a title in my future. That’s the goal.”

Avila is confident in relating that she doesn’t expect anything new from Tate that she hasn’t seen elsewhere. She is also cautious of getting starstruck, given her high school history.

“She’s a former champion. She’s amazing. She’s done wonders for women’s MMA,” Avila said. “I remember there was a memory that popped up on my Facebook that she retired seven years ago and I’m like, all right, the bantam division’s open. I can come in. And that was seven years ago. And now I get to fight her.”

Reflecting on the fight, she expressed, “It’s kind of cool how like, Manifesting and everything’s coming around. Is there a part of you that when you look at a fight like this, you can sort of imagine yourself maybe 20 years in the future and you look back at your resume of women you fought and you’d be like, wow, to have Misha Tate’s name on there next to a W for me, would that be extra exciting for you? Is that something that you ever think about? That’s great. I’m going to love that. But I already have. My resume is actually pretty good already. I’ve beaten a lot of people in their prime. I beat the former champion Nico Montano before she became the champion. The majority of the people that I’ve fought have changed divisions after me. I’d like to think that, but I don’t know, maybe I’m just making up stories in my head. Every win is great for me, and having a win over Misha Tate, I think, would just solidify how good I actually am and can be.”

For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC on ESPN 52.

Story originally appeared on MMA Junkie