While the decision wasn’t easy, it appears as if the choice for Vanessa Demopoulos to leave the world of exotic dancing created a domino effect of positivity for her MMA career.
“Lil Monster” received quite a lot of attention after her postfight scrum her win at UFC 270 against Silvana Juarez. After she revealed that she had quit her job as an exotic dancing instructor to devote her time to MMA, got a lot of attention.
Her extra focus paid off as she recovered from Juarez’s huge right hand and used an armbar to get a tap at the half-way point.
“I said [I worked as an exotic dancer for] 13 years, but it was longer than that, because I started dancing at 18 years old,” Demopoulos told MMA Fighting. “I’m 33 now, I’ve written two books on the industry, I grew up in the industry, and walking away from it was one of the scariest things I have ever done. It’s just so scary, man, because that was the way I was making money all of these years to fight full-time.
“I was working at night, training all day, but I was only able to work two nights a week. I was like, ‘F*ck! Are you looking to make some money? Do I want to make a few dollars? Every morning .”
I looked at it.
The first octagon win for Demopoulos netted her a $24,000 fight purse — which included a $12,000 win bonus — along with her very first “Performance of the Night” bonus, which couldn’t have come at a better time after making a life-altering decision heading into a big fight.
” I didn’t have much money,” Demopoulos stated. It’s not that I’m good [financially]. I’m just plain bad. It wasn’t my thing, so I decided to walk away. Sponsors would have prevented me from doing this. It was scary.”
In her octagon debut, the former LFA strawweight champion dropped a unanimous decision to JJ Aldrich at UFC Vegas 35 in August. Perhaps in a must-win scenario, Demopoulos determined that leaving her job as an exotic dancer needed to happen after weighing out all of the different options in play.
When the dust settled, the 11-fight pro knew she had to take her UFC opportunity and run with it — not to mention, she could still dance whenever she wanted, which is what she loved about the job most.
“I had conversations with myself when I was making this decision — I went through all of these different scenarios,” Demopoulos said. “‘What if you quit and you still win? “What if you refuse to quit and still win?” I was a dancer for many years and won many fights. Because I have to keep doing what I can do, there’s no way I could quit.
“The camp was truly life-changing because it allowed us to recover and rest. Although I was thinking about many things, I didn’t really care. This is the time. I have to put this to the side, because I’m going to make fighting happen. No matter what, I’m going to make this work. This is going to work. This is the result of positive thinking.
“I love pole dancing, I love doing all the acrobatics and stuff in the air, but I don’t have to be a stripper to do that. I don’t have to be a dancer in a club. While I was driving down the street, my sister and I were dancing together. I got out of the car at a red light and started dancing in the street. Because I am wild and free, I do not need to dance in a club. You can trust me that I will get my creative compulsions out of dance through many other means .”
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While getting her first UFC win and finish will stick in her memory forever, it might pale in comparison to the text message she received hours after her victory.
Demopoulos discovered that her performance bonus would more than double her show and win money. It seemed that the old saying, “Everything happens for a reason” rings true.
“So we had an afterparty and I was there putting everything together, waiting for my friends to show up. So it was me alone and — I recall this — Jason [House] text me in a hallway. It literally welts my up right now because it sent me that message and I dropped in the hallway,” Demopoulos stated. “People were walking by and I was just crying. This was an amazing, freaking sensation.
“I went through so much for this camp between dancing, my family had gotten sick, my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer, my little brother went to prison, and I’m like, ‘Bro, can anything else happen?’ I planned to do all of this and make these things happen, then I got that call and it was just like, man, you can do anything you want to accomplish in this life. You’ve got to want it, you’ve got to dig for it, and you’ve got to get after it. It was so awesome .”
