Taylor Guardado only suffered one loss in her amateur mixed martial arts career and it came against women’s MMA pioneer Ronda Rousey.
Speaking with Mike Owens in a MiddleEasy exclusive interview, the one-time PFL finalist was asked about her 2011 amateur showdown with the former UFC women’s bantamweight champion. Guardado revealed that like many of Rousey’s opponents, she found herself on the losing end via armbar.
“I remember it, but all I know is that I got caught in an armbar, and back then, the way to get out of an armbar that I was taught was to turn your thumb down and then roll to get out of it and then stack. I’d have to find the picture online, but I definitely remember turning my thumb and trying to roll and the ref stopping the fight and I sat up at the end of the fight and I was like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ He was like, ‘Well, I thought your arm was going to break’ because it was amateurs so you don’t want the arm to break.
“I just remember getting up and kind of yelling, ‘I can defend this. I was fine.’ Now looking back, it’s not a bad loss. It’s not a terrible loss and it’s also an amateur loss, and yeah. It doesn’t make any difference nowadays. It gets brought up a lot, but it doesn’t really make a difference with my career currently.”
Taylor Guardado turned pro the same year she faced Ronda Rousey under the Tuff-N-Uff label more than a decade ago, but didn’t take her first professional fight until 2020. Since then, she has amassed a record of 3-2. While not terribly impressive on paper, Guardado has earned two additional exhibition victories as part of the Invicta FC Phoenix Series 3 tournament. Her only losses have come against Taneisha Tennant in the Phoenix Series 3 championship and to two-time PFL champion Kayla Harrison at the 2021 PFL Championship.
Guardado will return to action this weekend against Jackie Cataline under the Front Street Fights banner on February 3.
