UFC fighter Amanda Ribas had a recent encounter with a stalker.
Ribas says before her UFC Vegas 89 main event against Rose Namajunas, a Ukrainian man reportedly tried to meet Ribas multiple times. The Brazilian says she met the man during her UFC 251 fight week against Paige VanZant.
Since then, Ribas says the man has been trying to meet her and contact him, which has creeped her out.
“I don’t remember his name, but he was a bit of a crazy guy,” Amanda Ribas told Ag. Fight (via MMAFighting). “On the first day, I arrived at the hotel — usually the fans are there for us to sign something, take a picture — but this citizen was a little crazy. He kept screaming, ‘Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.’ That same day, the guy at the front desk called my room and said, ‘Amanda, Alex is here wanting to go upstairs.’ Except that Alex is the name of my manager. I said, ‘Hey, the sensei is here now’. He went and said a crazy last name, I said, ‘I don’t know.’ I thought that was kind of weird.
“The next day, when we arrived again at the reception, the young man was waiting. But he said he wanted to talk to me, and I said I couldn’t at the moment. He spoke to my father, handed him a letter, a bracelet and a teddy bear. So far, so normal, because it’s something that happens. I even like it, I love to get gifts. Then I read in the letter that he was in love with me as a man since 2020, that he met me in Abu Dhabi.”
“We went to do some research. This young man, on his social network, it was written that I was his wife, that he lived in such and such a country and was going to move to [my hometown] Varginha [Minas Gerais, Brazil]. There was a picture of a teddy bear, everyone in my family, saying, ‘This is Marcelo, this is Arthur, this is Mirelly, this is Amanda, my wife’. I had some crazy business.”
Along with the gifts, the fighter reportedly got into the UFC PI and told people he was Amanda Ribas’ wife.
“The other day, this citizen managed to get into the P.I., I don’t know how, and he was telling people that I was his wife,” Ribas laughed. “[My manager] Alex [Davis] found out about it first, then he told me. Then he notified the UFC and they left a security guard with me 24 hours a day to be even more protected. It seems that they found out that he is a fighter, and he couldn’t fight in an event because he had taken a sword (laughs).”
Amanda Ribas Coming Off Loss To Rose Namajunas
In her last fight at UFC Vegas 91, Amanda Ribas suffered a five-round decision loss to Rose Namajuans.
Ribas has alternated wins and losses in seven fights, as she’s 3-4 during that stretch and is 7-4 overall in the UFC. Before the loss to Namajunas, Ribas scored a knockout win over Luana Pinheiro. In her UFC career, Amanda Ribas has notable wins over Paige VanZant, Mackenzie Dern, and Viviane Araujo.
Ribas is currently ranked eighth at strawweight and ninth at flyweight as she’s been competing in both weight classes. She does not have her next fight booked.