Bia Mesquita said on November 11 that she may change how she handles the ground before she meets Macy Chiasson at UFC 334 on Saturday, November 14, a small tactical shift that could shape a fight between two bantamweights with very different frames. Mesquita said she still sees back control as the strongest position, but she now wants to move away from it sooner and look for a finish for a minute or two before settling into mount or half guard.
The timing matters because Mesquita is heading into one of the biggest stages of her UFC run with a specific adjustment in mind, and Chiasson is not a matching-sized opponent. Chiasson, 35, is 5-foot-11 with a 72-inch reach, giving her a five-inch height advantage and a four-and-a-half-inch reach edge over Mesquita, who is 5-foot-6 with a 67.5-inch reach. Opening odds list Chiasson at +222 and Mesquita at -270, which reflects the market’s view of the matchup even before the cage door closes in New York.
Mesquita’s comments came after she criticized a referee’s grasp of grappling in a recent UFC fight, when Renato Moicano was stood up from back control against Tom Nolan. That decision stuck with her. She said she is not abandoning the position that has made her so dangerous, only trying to avoid getting trapped in it long enough for a referee to intervene. The idea now is to press for a finish more aggressively, then advance if it does not come quickly.
Her last fight showed both why that instinct exists and why she trusts it. In June, Mesquita was hit hard about 90 seconds into the bout against Melissa Mullins and rushed into a clinch to recover. Mullins threw her with an uchi mata at 1:40 of the opening round, but Mesquita regrouped, controlled her from guard, isolated the right arm and finished with an armbar at 3:16. A day after saying that fight was very important in her career, Mesquita admitted the mistake was getting too excited with the striking and said the errors kept piling up before she composed herself and settled in.
That lesson sits next to a resume that has turned almost every one of her UFC appearances into a submission win. Mesquita, 35, is 8-0 as a pro with six submissions, one knockout and one decision, and all three of her UFC victories have ended the same way. She beat Irina Alekseeva on October 11, 2025, then Montse Rendon on March 14, 2026, before the Mullins finish in June. The Brazilian jiu-jitsu great, a 10-time world champion, has already said she wants to finish 2026 inside the top 10, then push toward the top five and a title shot in 2027.
Saturday gives her another step toward that path, and a harsher test of whether the adjustment she described on November 11 changes anything at all. Chiasson enters after a loss to Ailin Perez, and the bout is set for the early prelims with an advertised start time of 5 p.m. Eastern. Mesquita has said it is a dream to fight at Madison Square Garden, but for her, the bigger question is practical: whether she can stay as dangerous as ever while giving a referee fewer reasons to reset the position.
