There’s something cruel about Las Vegas when you’ve got everything to lose. The lights don’t blink for you; they mock you. The Octagon doesn’t hum with promise; it sneers, 25 feet of judgment beneath a ceiling of fluorescent indifference.
On Saturday, November 1, Montserrat “Conejo” Ruiz will walk into the UFC Apex as a 32-year-old grappler clinging to a flicker of belonging. Three losses. Two years out. Four years since her last win. For most fighters, that combination is a death sentence. For Conejo, it’s the beginning of a defiant sermon — one final psalm against the machinery that forgets so quickly.
The Weight of Silence
She’s been gone since 2023. The cage door last slammed shut on her after Eduarda Moura pounded her into a grim stillness — a TKO, another stoppage, another night where her wrestling didn’t arrive in time to save her.
Since then, silence. No callouts, no hype reels, no redemption tours. Just a ghost from El Paso’s Kings MMA room grinding in anonymity, trying to re-stitch the faith that fighting once gave her.
For two years she’s had to live with the tape — three knockouts replayed on loop. Lemos in 35 seconds. Amorim in three rounds. Moura in two. A trilogy of punishment. Every time she gets hit now, commentators whisper durability issues like it’s a diagnosis, not a wound.
But Conejo doesn’t talk about trauma. She talks about rhythm. Wrestling rhythm. Seven Mexican national titles worth of repetition — grip, torque, press. The kind of cadence that once drowned out fear.
The Arithmetic of Survival
Her record — 10-4, but the numbers lie. Beneath them sits a ledger of missed windows and stubborn faith. She lands 83 percent of her takedowns; she just doesn’t always keep them. Her striking defense sits at 37 percent, which might as well be an open door for someone like Alice Ardelean, the woman waiting for her across the cage.
This fight isn’t a chess match. It’s a gamble on time. The UFC Apex is small — a 25-foot cage, the kind that forces conflict. That helps Conejo. Less space to dance, more room to collide. If she can get inside within the first 90 seconds, drag the Romanian-born striker into a clinch, then maybe, just maybe, her grappling will matter again.
Her best weapon? That scarf-hold armlock, that old-school trap from the wrestling mats of Chihuahua. It’s the move that earned her the nickname Conejo, the rabbit — slippery, unexpected, impossible to cage for long.
The Challenger: Alice “Wonderland” Ardelean
Alice Ardelean fights like a woman allergic to stillness. 6.7 significant strikes per minute — she lands eight times more punches than Conejo does. Her takedown defense? A granite-hard 88 percent. She doesn’t fight to kill; she fights to accumulate, drowning opponents under pace until they forget how to breathe.
And she’s coming off her first UFC win, a decision over Rayanne dos Santos that wasn’t flashy but proved she belonged. Confidence, rhythm, momentum — the holy trinity Conejo no longer owns.
The bookmakers don’t mince words: Ardelean -380, Conejo +300. The math says Conejo loses again. But fighting has always been an arithmetic of denial — the sport where probability burns in the first clinch.
The Anatomy of a Last Chance
For Conejo Ruiz, this fight is not just must-win. It’s must-exist. A fourth consecutive defeat, especially another TKO, and the UFC will quietly slide her name into the release column.
That knowledge sits heavy, but it also purifies. It strips away everything except purpose. Every fighter has one fight where their entire identity hangs in suspension — where the cage becomes confession. This is hers.
Her coaches know it. They’ve simplified everything:
“First ninety seconds,” one said this week. “Get your hands on her in ninety.”
That’s the plan — close distance, clinch, dump, suffocate. Turn the fight into a phone booth and never let her breathe. She needs four minutes of control per round just to win the judges back.
No space for fancy footwork. No time for patience. Just chaos wrapped in muscle memory.
When Poetry Meets Violence
Juana Inés de la Cruz once wrote, ‘I do not study to know more, but to ignore less.’
Montserrat Ruiz could have written that on her gloves.
She doesn’t fight to know glory — she fights to ignore the voice that says she’s finished. To deny the analysts who’ve already drafted her eulogy. In her mind, defiance is theology.
That’s what makes Conejo dangerous again. You can’t train to face someone who’s fighting for her identity.
She’s not chasing belts, followers, or Performance-of-the-Night bonuses. She’s chasing something rawer — the feeling of being seen as a warrior again, not a cautionary tale.
The Striker vs. The Grappler
It’s the oldest story in MMA, but this one carries a hint of tragedy.
Conejo is pure wrestling — the kind that smells of sweat-slick gyms and national flags. Ardelean is modern MMA — cardio, volume, algorithms of output. Their numbers orbit each other like two different sports.
If Conejo wins, it’ll be through dominance: relentless takedowns, positional control, submission attempts.
If Ardelean wins, it’ll be through attrition: pressure, precision, patience.
The 25-foot cage tilts the geometry slightly in Conejo’s favor — shorter walls, fewer exits. But Ardelean’s balance, her ability to stuff double-legs and reverse position, erases much of that advantage.
Still, there’s a quiet variable: heart. Ardelean’s momentum is fresh, but it’s built on comfort. Conejo’s desperation burns from scarcity. Sometimes, in the Apex’s cruel fluorescence, hunger outweighs confidence.
The Ghosts of 2021
Every fighter carries a version of themselves they’re trying to resurrect. Conejo’s ghost lives in March 2021, when she out-grappled Cheyanne Vlismas for three straight rounds and left the cage roaring in Spanish, her flag wrapped tight, her eyes wet with disbelief.
That night, she was pure motion — wrestling converted into art. Then came the Lemos fight, the fast KO, the first crack in the armor.
It’s been four years since that version of her existed. That’s what she’s fighting for now — the chance to prove that night wasn’t a glitch.
The Psychological War
Every strike she eats will remind her of Moura’s elbows. Every clinch she loses will echo Lemos’ fists. Ardelean will test more than her chin — she’ll test her memory.
But Conejo has learned something in the dark: you can only break once. After that, it’s all fragments finding new order.
Her training partners say she’s meaner now — less smile, more snarl. She doesn’t chase takedowns to score anymore; she hunts them to survive. There’s a difference.
All logic points toward Ardelean. Younger by cardio, sharper in output, free of ghosts.
Projection: 68 percent chance of victory.
But logic doesn’t account for fighters who treat pain as penance. Conejo’s path is narrow but real:
Smother early. Chain-wrestle until the crowd forgets the word striking. Drag the fight into exhaustion, where rhythm dies and instinct rules.
In that trench, the wrestler has a chance.
What’s Really at Stake
This fight isn’t about rankings. It’s about permission — the permission to still call oneself a fighter after the world has stopped listening.
For Conejo, winning would mean a contract extension, yes. But more than that, it would mean a reclamation. A return to the narrative. A way of saying I am not done, and I never will be.
She knows the company wants fresh faces. She knows the sport moves on. But somewhere between the lights of Vegas and the grind of Chihuahua, she found something most fighters lose — acceptance of her own mortality inside the sport. And from that acceptance comes a strange, terrible power.
The Defiant Ending
Saturday night, when Bruce Buffer calls her name, Conejo Ruiz will not smile. She will nod once, breathe twice, and walk forward.
Maybe she’ll lose again. Maybe Ardelean will land too clean, too early.
But for however long that fight lasts, Montserrat Conejo Ruiz will embody the purest form of rebellion: presence.
Because every time a fighter steps into the Octagon knowing the world expects them to fall — and still chooses to swing — they cheat oblivion.
And that’s what makes her dangerous, even as an underdog.
In a sport built on youth, noise, and algorithms, Conejo stands for something older, almost sacred: the refusal to disappear quietly.
So when she shoots that first takedown — raw, desperate, furious — it won’t just be a technique. It’ll be a prayer.
And somewhere, in the hum of the Apex, the echo of that prayer might just sound like resurrection.
Prediction:
Heart says Conejo by submission.
Head says Ardelean by decision.
But this isn’t about who wins on paper — it’s about who refuses to vanish.
On November 1st, the rabbit runs again.
doragon sports 