ASIA'S MOST INFLUENTIAL Keep on Fighting

For Ramona Pascual, failure is an opportunity By Lauren James. Portraits 

- Bridget Bennett

A perfectly timed knee to the solar plexus" is how Ramona Pascual A described the move that rounded out her debut year as Hong Kong’s first and only woman to fight in the UFC. Except the knee in question came from her competitor Tamires Vidal. Having lost her last fight of 2022 in Las Vegas, Pascual used the opportunity to reflect. “Devastated at how things turned out but I’m far from broken,” she wrote on Instagram. “It takes a lot to live this kind of life and reach limits behind closed doors that most people will never know … I’m here to keep it real and do me. No apologies. Rock bottom we’ve been here before. And I’ll claw my way out every time.”

Rather than a wave of a white flag, it was a war cry that ignited the Hong Kong fighter’s fans, who showered her with encouragement. It didn’t matter that this was Pascual’s third loss of the year, bringing her future with the UFC into question: her entry to the highest level of her sport last January broke barriers for Hong Kong athletes, and after years of disrupted training due to the pandemic and a crushing injury, it brought her name into the cage at an international level.