Recent strawweight title challenger Tatiana Suarez will return to action against Amanda Lemos at Noche UFC 3 in San Antonio, Texas on September 13th.

Nine years in the making, the injury-jinxed Suarez was finally granted a title shot against Zhang Weili at UFC 312 in February, but suffered a unanimous decision loss.

That marked the first loss of the 34-year-old Saurez’s 11-fight career, which had included a seven-fight winning streak in the UFC that began when she was The Ultimate Fighter Season 23 back in 2016.

A thyroid cancer survivor, Suarez has also had bad luck with injuries over the years, including an almost four-year layoff between 2019 and 2023, so even just eventually managing to return was something of a victory in itself, and a couple of wins since then proved she was still a force to be reckoned with.

So while she may have come up short against Weili, Suarez remains ranked No.2 in the division heading into her next fight against the No.4 placed Lemos, who is coming in off a unanimous decision win over Iasmin Lucindo in March.

That continues a recent sequence of ‘win-one, lose-one’ for Lemos, but her overall UFC record does stand at 9-4.

Suarez vs. Lemos joins a Noche UFC 3 event that is expected to be headlined by a featherweight fight between recent title contender Diego Lopes and rising star Jean SIlva.