Melissa Amaya Tore a Muscle to Punch Her Way Into the TUF 34 Final

Melissa Amaya is in the strawweight final of The Ultimate Fighter 34, and she's arrived with both arms still attached — which, if you saw the fight, is genuinely remarkable. In her semifinal against GiGi Canuto (7-2, five of those wins by submission), Amaya spent the early minutes getting bent into shapes no elbow should hold, first in an armbar and then a triangle that torqued her limb at angles that made her own coaches wince.

She didn't tap. Instead, she started throwing punches at Canuto's face until the hold came loose, then flipped the fight entirely, closing Round 1 with heavy ground-and-pound and finishing the job in the second on a visibly gassed opponent. The physical cost: a torn brachialis, a muscle so deep that Amaya's physical therapist called it the best-case scenario — no tendon, ligament or bone gave out, which he told her was impressive in itself.

Kill or Be Killed

Amaya admitted it's the closest she's ever come to submitting. She didn't realize how tight the triangle was until she rewatched the episode, saying that in the moment she could feel her arm doing things it wasn't supposed to and just decided she wasn't going out without swinging. When she finally freed the arm, she says there was no relief and no celebration — just "next thing, next thing, next thing" until she looked up and was on top again. She described it as no longer being an athlete competing, but pure war mode.

Getting to that point at all was its own saga. Amaya was floored in training camp by an SI joint flare-up — a nerve condition she traces back, of all places, to a pickleball match. She says the wobbly, can't-stand sensation was the last scenario she'd braced for; she'd expected a busted knee or a broken nose long before her back. The PI's physical therapists, in her words, worked magic at the most crucial stretch of her career.

The win carries weight beyond the medical report. Amaya has now eliminated both of coach Michael Bisping's top picks — Anna Melisano (6-2) and Canuto — and guaranteed an all-Team Cormier final, with teammates Delphine Benouaich and Tina Black coming through the other side of the bracket. Not bad for someone who says she showed up to tryouts convinced she was at the wrong event, surrounded by fighters she assumed were far ahead of her.

Now she's one fight from the TUF 34 crown and the multi-fight UFC contract that comes with it. Amaya credits mentor Julianna Peña — the former bantamweight champ she compared to a cockroach for refusing to quit against Amanda Nunes — with teaching her what that kind of stubbornness looks like. Peña (13-6) knows the value of a fight nobody expects you to survive. Amaya just proved she's built the same way.